CAA hasn’t quite come out and called BS on Range Media Partners‘ noncompete-focused counter-complaint in the companies’ yearlong poaching legal battle, but they got pretty close.
“The facts are clear: the four former agents forfeited their rights to profit from CAA when they began a competing business using stolen CAA property for use at Range, all while still working at CAA,” the uber-agency’s attorney Bo Pearl said Tuesday, about 16 hours after Range fired its latest salvo off in L.A. Superior Court.
“It has taken years to uncover the layers of deception, but the videos, texts, and emails they so desperately have tried to hide reveal all.
“This last-ditch effort is devoid of merit,” the newishly minted Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner (formerly of Paul Hastings) concluded of the jury trial-seeking-filing of late last night by Range’s Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team.
Hitting the court docket just over a year after CAA sued the Pete Micelli-founded Range and its chieftains for the stealing of clients and trade secrets the lifting of confidential data and information and more, the November 24 countersuit also comes nearly three years into the ongoing arbitration slugfest between the principals over canceled equity and other compensation to ex-CAAers and now Range warlords Jack Whigham, Dave Bugliari, Mick Sullivan, and Micheal Cooper.
In Range’s filing Monday, the management company (or is it a talent agency in sheep’s clothing, as CAA claims?) asserted that the JAMS arbitrator has “already ruled as a matter of law, that CAA’s noncompetes are invalid and illegal.” Citing a Puck report, attorneys Ilissa Samplin, Orin Snyder, Jillian London and Daniel Nowicki insist that CAA’s side has “collapsed.”
Of course, whatever is or is not happening in a confidential process behind closed doors, the fact is no final ruling from the arbitrators is expected until next year, I hear.
Correspondingly, and no doubt why Range went on the offense this week, CAA has seen most of the previously dismissed claims of Range’s so-called sticky fingers and the Concealment of Unlawful Conduct sub-claims allowed back into the public case by Judge Mark Young.
In that context, Range this week took aim at what it calls the Bryan Lourd-run agency’s move of late “weaponizing illegal noncompete agreements to intimidate and punish employees who consider joining Range.” Alleging violation of unfair competition law and tortious interference, the injunction and $1 million damages desiring countersuit declares “this conduct is not only vindictive; it is a direct attack on employee mobility and fair competition —the very public policies California’s century-old ban on noncompetes was enacted to protect.”
Today, Range’s outside counsel Samplin and Snyder swipe away CAA’s response to their client’s countersuit by doubling down on the noncompete of it all.
“No amount of spin from CAA will hide the truth,” the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partners exclaimed. “It bullied its own employees with illegal non-competes and has zero defense.”
“We look forward to holding them accountable.”
And you thought the Paramount, Comcast and Netflix bids for Warner Bros Discovery was a dog fight ….
As for what’s next: taking the end of year round of holidays into account, CAA’s lawyers have around 30 days to respond to Range’s countersuit. So, for this week, Happy Thanksgiving.
