Yahoo Finance CAA Finally Goes After “Unlawful” Range Media Partners For Stealing Confidential Agency Material & Being A Talent Agency In All But Name
EXCLUSIVE: CAA and Range Media Partners already are in arbitration over equity the agency canceled for the agents who made up the 2020-formed management company. Now the Bryan Lourd-led CAA is after Range in open court for alleged theft and some big bucks.
“Range is an unlicensed talent agency built on deceit,” reads the four-claim lawsuit filed September 30 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
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“Seeking a shortcut to success, Range’s initial founder, Peter Micelli (a former CAA literary agent and CAA member) found four highly paid CAA leaders to act as his accomplices: posing as loyal CAA members, sitting shoulder to shoulder in confidential CAA meetings about clients and business, all the while covertly working to benefit Range and themselves, and to harm CAA,” adds the suit, which seeks large but unspecified damages.
Click to read CAA’s four-claim lawsuit.
“Put simply, Range’s business model is the pursuit of unlawful profit through deception: Range skirts rules that California legislators and artists’ guilds put in place to protect those working in the entertainment industry,” the filing adds. “The core ‘trick’ of Range is that it acts as a talent agency, but labels itself a management company. Range therefore engages in lucrative transactions foreclosed to law-abiding talent agencies,” aka agencies like CAA.
If the agency’s attorney’s words in the 28-page filing weren’t clear enough, the lawyers doubled down outside the docket.
“CAA is prepared to prove that Range Media was formed through dishonest conduct and, as reflected in other public, pending legal proceedings about Range’s failure to comply with arbitration subpoenas, has concealed evidence of its founders’ actions,” CAA counsel Elena Baca told Deadline today of the suit filed Monday. “Peter Micelli, along with his accomplices who were at CAA while founding Range, conducted a lengthy scheme to enrich themselves in ways that violated their contracts and legal obligations to CAA, talent guild regulations, and ethical boundaries, as CAA will demonstrate in court,” the Paul Hastings LLP attorney added. “CAA will fiercely protect the agency against improper market conduct and the misuse of its confidential information.”
Reps for Range, which was created by David Bugliari, Micelli and Jack Whigham, did not respond to request for comment from Deadline. If and when they do, this post will be updated.
In point of fact, none of this is unexpected. A number of the accusations in the complaint have come up in the arbitration proceedings, I hear. Actually, in search of a timeline and more, CAA has stepped out of that process in part to seek greater access to documents involving Range moneyman (and New York Mets boss) Steven Cohen and former clients that jumped ship when the self-declared management company was unveiled four years ago. CAA is also seeking to force testimony from Micelli and other core members Range team in the behind-closed-doors arbitration.
To that, the lawsuit for breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference may serve as a wedge to strongly nudge a reaction in arbitration.
As this has all been going in court, Range has been pulling in investments over the last few months from John Malone’s Liberty Global and TPG founding partner David Bonderman’s family office Wildcat Capital Management as the company expands its reach and scope domestically and overseas. Over the past year and a half alone, Range has bolstered its film division by merging with La La Land production company Automatik. The company has also rolled out a sports strategy calling for the acquisition of growth-stage companies within the media rights, athlete marketing and golf verticals; and fortified its music efforts by launching a music publishing division and opening a Nashville office.
Not that CAA has been standing still.
This new suit comes almost a year to the day after Artemis, run by French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault (spouse of CAA client Salma Hayek), closed the deal on its estimated $7 billon purchase of a majority share of the agency. Singapore-based Temasek remains a minority investor in CAA, while CMC Capital remains a strategic partner. All added up, those big bucks and big backers are intended to give CAA the booster rockets to scale up in Hollywood and beyond as the media industry pivots into uncharted territories.
Dade Hayes contributed to this report.
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