The already explosive legal battle between talent agency CAA and Range Media Partners - the management firm founded in 2020 by a team of former CAA agents - got even more dramatic earlier this week, as CAA beefed up its lawsuit, adding new evidence and new legal claims.
According to the amended filing, Range’s founders acted more like secret agents than talent agents when planning the launch of their new company. They “adopted spy-novel tropes”, CAA claims, as they lifted confidential information and insight from CAA - and then worked hard to cover their tracks - all to ensure their new business got a head-start in the talent representation business.
“Newly uncovered video footage, documents, photographs and secret Telegram chats reveal an extensive plot by Range’s founders to steal from CAA, set up an illegal talent agency and cover up its wrongdoing”, says the new legal filing, according to Deadline.
Along the way the Range founders used tools “to avoid detection and eliminate digital fingerprints”, including “ephemeral messaging” apps like Signal and Telegram. And they secured and used “‘alternate’ and ‘burner’ cell phones”. All of this, the lawsuit insists, was driven by “greed, hubris, the lure of shortcuts and a willingness to betray trusting colleagues”.
Needless to say, Range’s founders completely reject the idea that the launch of their company involved spy novel level espionage. They didn’t “steal any trade secrets or anything else belonging to CAA”, a legal rep told Deadline this week, who added that CAA’s lawsuit is “baseless”, fueled by “resentment” and motivated by “bruised egos and petty vengeance”.
“While CAA wastes time on spiteful lawsuits”, the legal representative went on, “Range is focused on what matters: working collaboratively with CAA at large to service the 150+ clients they share. We’re confident we’ll prevail - because the truth, the law and the industry are on our side”.
Range was founded as a management and production company working in music and entertainment by Peter Micelli, Jack Whigham, David Bugliari, Michael Cooper and Mick Sullivan. Micelli left CAA in 2018 after more than two decades with the agency. He then had a two year stint with eOne before launching Range. But Whigham, Bugliari, Cooper and Sullivan, moved straight from CAA to the new business.
CAA first went legal last year, accusing Range’s founders of “carrying out a scheme designed to give Range an unlawful competitive edge”, which began while Whigham, Bugliari, Cooper and Sullivan were still working at CAA. That conduct, CAA argues, breached the agents’ contractual obligations to their employer and violated various other business confidentiality laws. The amended lawsuit adds new claims that the agents also violated California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act and Penal Code.
In this week’s boosted filing, CAA sets out in more detail some of the trade secrets the Range founders allegedly lifted. That includes confidential client and revenue lists, hundreds of pages of confidential meeting notes, as well as casting information and confidential scripts.
CAA’s original lawsuit also claimed that Range positions itself as a management company rather than a talent agency, partly so the agents could claim they weren’t directly competing with their former employer, but also to avoid some of the regulation that talent agencies are subject to in California.
