Charles Oakley is going to have to write a big check to Madison Square Garden as part of the ongoing lawsuit between the former Knick and the team’s parent company.
On Friday, a federal judge ruled Oakley owes MSG roughly $642,000 in attorney fees from the company’s quest to get Oakley’s deleted text messages after his 2017 ejection from the arena that prompted the lawsuit. The figure is lower than the $1.5 million MSG’s lawyers requested.
Oakley’s text messages are part of an eight-year lawsuit he filed against MSG and Knicks owner James Dolan after he was ejected from a Knicks game in February 2017 and led away in handcuffs, just feet from where Dolan was sitting. Oakley has been critical of Dolan’s ownership over the years while the defendants argue Oakley was drunk and belligerent, which led to his ejection.
The 6-foot-9 former forward played 19 NBA seasons, 10 of which for the Knicks, sued Dolan and the company in September 2017 alleging that security had used excessive force and thrown him to the ground. He is seeking damages for assault, battery, and damage to his reputation after Dolan insinuated Oakley was removed because of a substance abuse problem. The case was dismissed in district court in 2021, but overturned by a federal appeals court in May 2023. MSG sought summary judgment in late May, but the judge has yet to rule on that motion.
MSG won the right to pursue legal fees in July, when a judge scolded Oakley for not keeping text messages from the aftermath of his arena ejection. MSG said its legal team at King & Spalding LLP tallied the cost of trying to recover Oakley’s text messages, which came to $1.5 million.
Oakley argued in August that the hourly rate for MSG’s attorneys should be reduced based on a lack of background information they failed to provide. “Bad faith is the only sound explanation for a fee request of over one-and-a-half million dollars for one motion,” Oakley said in his August court filing in response to MSG’s requested figure.
However, Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky did find that MSG had insufficient time entries that were inconsistent, which led her to cap the hourly rate for legal fees at $200 per hour, according to the ruling.
The judge ultimately granted MSG $604,000 in attorney fees. The figure is 45% of $1.3 million, after she knocked down the $1.5 million by $200,000. The judge also cut MSG’s requested costs from $57,335 to $38,022 to make Oakley’s bill $642,337.
Oakley’s career earnings are roughly $44 million, according to HoopsHype.
“The court denied most of MSG’s wildly inflated fee request,” Valdi Licul, one of Oakley’s attorneys said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “Nevertheless, we disagree that MSG is entitled to any recovery and will promptly seek to appeal.”
A spokesman for King & Spalding did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
