Charles Oakley Wants Knicks' James Dolan Named in Assault and Battery Lawsuit
Former New York Knicks forward Charles Oakley filed court papers last week seeking to add Knicks governor James Dolan to the assault and battery lawsuit he filed three years ago against the Madison Square Garden Company for his forcible removal from the arena during a February 2017 game.
Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic reported Wednesday that Oakley, who played for New York from 1988 until 1998, now alleges in court documents that Dolan "ordered" an assault to remove him from MSG:
"Defendant Dolan ... employs the security guards who assaulted Plaintiff, worked in concert with and aided and abetted them to perpetrate the assault by conspiring with the security personnel to use unreasonable force in ejecting Plaintiff from the Garden. [Dolan was] ordering the use of unreasonable force, enabling the use of unreasonable force by failing to exercise his control over the security personnel to prevent the assault and by subsequently approving, ratifying and adopting the assault."
Douglas Wigdor, Oakley's lawyer, told The Athletic the changes come after they received additional video evidence "that allowed us to then zoom in on Dolan." They allege the footage showed the Knicks governor conferring with a security guard right before he walked over to help escort Oakley.
Oakley argues in the court filing the video makes it "obvious that [the security team] acted at all times with the intention of forcing Mr. Oakley to leave the Garden with unreasonable force."
The Madison Square Garden Company released a statement to Kaplan about the updated filing.
"All claims against Jim Dolan have been dismissed, including on appeal, so we fully expect the court to once again find this latest attempt entirely without merit," the statement read.
"It's not necessarily a lifetime ban. I think the most important thing with that is that we need to keep the Garden a place that's comfortable and safe for everyone who goes there. Anybody that comes to the Garden, whether they've been drinking too much alcohol, they're looking for a fight, they're abusive, disrespectful to the staff and the fans—they're going to be ejected, and they're going to be banned. Because everybody has a right to come to those games and enjoy them, and no one has the right to take that away from everybody else. In this case, that did happen, so we are going to put the ban in place, and hopefully, it won't be forever."
In February, TMZ Sports reported the ban was quietly lifted in 2018.
Oakley hasn't returned to the arena over the past two seasons. Assault charges against him brought after the ejection were later dismissed.
