A blockbuster legal dispute is brewing in Hollywood.
Talent giant CAA (Creative Artists Agency) has filed a lawsuit against management firm Range Media Partners this week, accusing it of “stealing confidential information” ahead of the latter company’s launch in 2020.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles’ Superior Court on Monday (September 30), also claims that Range is “an unlicensed talent agency built on deceit”.
The lawsuit, which you can read in full here, further claims that, “seeking a shortcut to success,” Range’s founder, former CAA agent Peter Micelli, “found four highly-paid CAA leaders to act as his accomplices” and then “carried out a scheme designed to give Range an unlawful competitive edge”.
Those former agents, named in the lawsuit as Jack Whigham, David Bugliari, Michael Cooper, and Mick Sullivan, allegedley posed “as loyal CAA members,” sitting “in confidential CAA meetings about clients and business,” while at the same time “covertly working to benefit Range and themselves, and to harm CAA”.
Range Media Partners was launched by Micelli in 2020 after leaving CAA in 2018. He spent nearly two decades at CAA.
Today, Range manages talent across the music, film, sports and television industries. The company represents superstars including Bradley Cooper, Keira Knightley, Tom Hardy, M Night Shymalan, Michael Bay, Jack Harlow, PartyNextDoor, Midland, Cordae, Bazzi, Sean Douglas and most recently Rita Ora.
In April, Range secured a minority investment from a group of investors including Liberty Global and the family office of TPG chairman David Bonderman.
CAA claims in its lawsuit that while Range’s founders publicly announced its launch in August 2020, “in truth, by August 2020,” Micelli and the other former CAA agents “had spent months stealing Confidential Information” from CAA.
The lawsuit also claims that the former CAA agents, “working in concert with Micelli, induced other CAA employees — who the Range Founders knew were bound by confidentiality and loyalty obligations to CAA – to assist in stealing CAA’s Confidential Information”.
The lawsuit adds: “The Range Founders understood they were engaging in misconduct and tried to cover their tracks to avoid getting caught: urging more junior CAA employees to download encrypted messaging apps to avoid CAA detecting their communications, and directing CAA employees to export Confidential Information for delivery to certain of the Accomplices’ personal email accounts and cellphones. The Accomplices did all this while still working as senior CAA leaders and talent agents.”
In addition to accusing Range of stealing confidential information, CAA also accuses Range Media Partners of skirting rules in California by acting as a talent agency but “label[ling itself a management company” and is also alleged to be “engage[ing] in lucrative transactions foreclosed to law-abiding talent agencies”.
The California Talent Agencies Act requires that talent agents be licensed by the California Labor Commissioner.
The CAA complaint claims that a 2020 email form a current Range Partner “suggests Range was looking to exploit the ‘gray area’ between talent agents and managers”.
CAA alleges in the suit: “By not registering as an agency, Range could avoid the rules designed to protect clients. For the Accomplices, they could claim to not be competing with CAA and try to continue to receive a share of CAA profits (even though they were working to injure CAA).”
In addition to allegedly acting as unlicensed talent agents, CAA accuses Range and the former CAA agents of engaging “in a series of unlawful acts in violation of California Business and Professions Code Section 17200 and other legal obligations”.
CAA is asking the court for an injunction directing Range to return its confidential information and to “prohibit” Range from:
“Using or disclosing CAA’s Confidential Information; (2) unlawfully soliciting investors, clients, or customers of CAA using Confidential Information; (3) unlawfully soliciting CAA’s employees for Confidential Information; and (4) unlawfully violating the TAA and representing Writers Guild of America (“WGA”) members without the authorization of the WGA.”
CAA also seeks damages and jury trial.
Range Media Partners has become a prominent name in the music business over the past four years.
In September 2023, Range launched a music publishing division led by Casey Robison, former Executive Vice President, A&R at Hipgnosis Songs Group.
Last week, Range Music Publishing signed an exclusive, global administration agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group.
In June 2021, Range Media signed a worldwide distribution deal with Capitol Music Group (CMG) and Virgin Music & Artist Label Services.Music Business Worldwide
