Attorney ‘skeptical’ Knicks will win suit
After reviewing court documents in the nasty spat over alleged stolen scouting secrets, a legal expert believes the Raptors have “a stronger argument” to dismiss the Knicks’ suit because courts tend to favor league arbitration over litigation in such cases.
“I think it’s going to be a procedural fight,” Kevin Paule, a Tampa-based attorney who prosecutes and defends trade-secret litigation, told The Post. “I think there’s a stronger argument that the claims against the Raptors should head to arbitration [instead of civil court] because it’s one team against the other team.”
Though not involved in this case and careful not to make any predictions, Paule added he’s “skeptical” of the Knicks’ argument that the dispute shouldn’t be resolved by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
“When there is an arbitration agreement — and these are things that are in employment agreements and certainly in sports leagues — they’re almost enforced,” said Paule, who has been involved in cases with professional sports teams and athletes. “So courts tend to favor enforcement of them. So from that standpoint, I like to be on the side of the Raptors in terms of having it enforced.
“At least in their letters and how the Raptors are characterizing it, the Knicks seem to be arguing that this is not enforceable by the NBA because they are alleging violations of criminal law. I guess I’m a little skeptical of that argument. I don’t want to say it’s a total loser. But I’m skeptical of that argument.”
Regardless, the next step in this case, according to Paule, will be the Knicks filing a response to the Raptors’ motion to dismiss. Then the court could rule on whether or not to dismiss the suit. There’s also a pre-trial hearing scheduled for Halloween afternoon.
“So [a decision] could be a week after everything is filed, it could be up to a year,” said Paule.
As Paule noted, this type of lawsuit is at least very rare and possibly without precedent. Professional sports teams don’t sue other teams in the same league because they’re business partners.
The Knicks allege the Raptors hired their former video coordinator, Ikechukwu Azotam, as a “mole” who stole thousands of proprietary files and forwarded them to his new team.
The Raptors claimed the information that Azotam forwarded from his email was accessible to all NBA teams and “were far from confidential, let alone trade secrets.”
The Knicks didn’t back down.
“Given the theft of proprietary and confidential files and clear violation of criminal and civil law, we were left no choice but to take this to federal court and are confident the judicial system will agree,” an MSG spokesperson said.