Range Media Partners founders got caught with their sticky fingers in the CAA trade secrets cookie jar, the Bryan Lourd-run uberagency claims in an amended complaint
Or put another it another way: In the truest of Hollywood litigation tradition, CAA has uncovered what they clearly believe is the smokin’ gun of smokin guns in the multi-tiered battle with former staffers now at the self-described management company
“Newly uncovered video footage, documents, photographs, and secret Telegram chats reveal an extensive plot by Range’s founders to steal from Creative Artists Agency, LLC set up an illegal talent agency, and cover up its wrongdoing,” proclaims a heavily redacted amended complaint filed today by CAA’s outside counsel at Paul Hastings.
“This is what we now know,” the document adds with an attempt at thriller-level thrills. “Driven by greed, hubris, the lure of shortcuts, and a willingness to betray trusting colleagues, a small group of then-current and former CAA agents in 2019 began plotting to leave CAA,” the now six-claim, up from the previous four claims of October 2024, complaint in LA Superior Court goes on to say. “Over the next months, they began stealing CAA’s trade secrets, poaching talent and employees from CAA, designing and operating an unlicensed talent agency, and deliberately and systematically destroying evidence of Range’s scheme (redacted).”
“They adopted spy-novel tropes to hide their plan,” CAA alleges of Range founders former CAA and eOne exec Peter Micelli, CAA talent agents Jack Whigham, Michael Cooper, Mick Sullivan and Dave Bugliari and what ends they went to in order to get their hands on CAA’s crown jewels of strategy, technique and of course clients – big clients. “They used tools to avoid detection and eliminate digital fingerprints, fully aware of the legal risk. Encrypted ephemeral messaging was used to hide their illegal acts, including Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram. They secured and used ‘alternate’ and ‘burner’ cell phones.”
Now if this all sounds to you a bit like teenagers planning a banger of a weekend glamping in the mountains, you are picking up what the parental CAA are saying. Just here, capturing the interest and ambitions of the shifting agency world, the stakes might be a little bigger than who brought the edibles and the Wi-Fi hot spot, if you know what I mean?
“This conduct is illegal under multiple California laws, compelling CAA to take this action.”
Today’s filing comes almost a full five years after Micelli, Whigham, Cooper, Sullivan and Bugliari were among the well-connected core group that founded Range with some big bucks backing from hedge fund kingpin and now New York Mets owner Steve Cohen. It also comes approximately nine-months after the Artemis-owned CAA placed their initial complaint in the court docket that their nearly year-long action to put what they call Range’s “business model” of “pursuit of unlawful profit through deception” under the legal and ethical microscope.
What was allegedly stolen from CAA, according to CAA, was a lot. In a footnotes in today’s filing there is a list:
The trade secrets implicated here, at minimum, include the following materials: the confidential client and revenue lists that Whigham sent to his personal email address in March and June 2020; the hundreds of pages of confidential meeting notes that Sullivan sent to his personal email on his way out the door at CAA; the Open Directing Assignment and Open Casting Assignment ‘grids’ that Employee-1 obtained from CAA in August 2020; the client “rundowns” that Sullivan sent to himself in August 2020; the highly confidential watermarked meeting information that Cooper’s assistant emailed to her personal email account and then to her Range account and/or uploaded to Dropbox; certain confidential or watermarked scripts, and the highly confidential information Wandling received from Employee-1 via Telegram and email. A preliminary list of these trade secret materials is attached as Appendix A. All of these documents contain nonpublic confidential information, gathered at significant expense from countless agents, executives, and employees in various roles at CAA. These materials, often watermarked because of their sensitivity, are not distributed to those outside the company and CAA takes additional measures to keep that information within CAA for the benefit of CAA.
Frustratingly, the last line of this juicy footnote is redacted.
Monday’s filing actually adds two new claims to the four from last year’s Round One. There’s a Violation of California Uniform Trade Secrets Act claim and a Violations of California Penal Code Section 502(c) claim in the mix now for the various unspecified damages over $25,000 CAA is seeking along with injunctive relief that essentially is intended to bring death by defenestration to the currently expanding Range.
Like when CAA’s suit was first filed last year, representatives from Range did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the latest filing.
On the other hand, and remember this is separate from the very closed door arbitration over equity that is going on simultaneously between the players here. CAA’s main outside attorney had even more to say that what was in their filing Monday.
“As CAA’s new complaint details: for months when they knew they were leaving CAA, multiple Range founders stole valuable information from CAA,” Bo Pearl told Deadline today. “They took the hard work of CAA colleagues to accelerate Range and lure clients, all while being paid by CAA,” the Reed Hasting partner added. “Despite Range’s many attempts to rewrite history and the hubris to believe that laws don’t apply to it, the evidence of Range’s wrongdoing is crystal clear. Recently recovered emails, messages, photos, and videos reveal the depths of the deception. The Range founders’ public pronouncements of righteousness and innocence are undercut by their every action, which will be laid bare in court.”
That sounds like some serious smokin’ in the boy’s room.
