{"id":1702,"date":"2017-03-03T01:05:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T06:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2023-07-25T11:56:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T15:56:22","slug":"a-rumble-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/2017\/03\/a-rumble-in-the-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rumble in the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"415943530_eb168cddd7_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On February 8th, retired New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed<\/a> from Madison Square Garden (MSG) during a Knicks-Clippers game. Oakley was charged with three counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of criminal trespass after he got into a scuffle with a number of MSG security officials. He is accused of striking one security official in the face and for pushing two other security officials as they attempted to intervene. While Oakley contends that he did nothing wrong, Knicks officials claim that he was causing trouble and was bothering Knicks owner James Dolan.<\/p>\n

According to Sports Illustrated<\/a>, Dolan may have escalated the conflict after conducting a radio interview shortly after the altercation. Dolan stated, on air, that Oakley \u201csuffers from a \u2018problem with anger\u2019 and that Oakley is \u2018both physically and verbally abusive,\u2019 which Dolan\u2014who does not appear to have any formal training in medicine\u2014classified as \u2018personality problems.\u2019 Dolan also speculated that Oakley \u2018may have a problem with alcohol.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakley\u2019s attorney said that he would deal with these statements \u201cin a court of law<\/a>.\u201d This means that Oakley and his attorney will likely file a defamation suit against Dolan for his statements. In order for Oakley to succeed in a defamation lawsuit, he would have to prove that Dolan\u2019s statements were specific, not vague, expressed as a factual statement, and that the alleged defamation caused him some kind of injury.<\/p>\n

It seems possible that a court could rule that Dolan did offer specific and factual-sounding statements regarding Oakley\u2019s alleged \u201cproblem with anger,\u201d \u201cabusive[ness]\u201d and \u201cpersonality problems.\u201d However, the insertion of Dolan\u2019s qualifying, \u201cmay\u201d in his statement about Oakley\u2019s alleged \u201cproblem with alcohol,\u201d could remove such a comment from being considered specific and factual-sounding. As a public figure, another hurdle in Oakley\u2019s potential defamation lawsuit would be his need to prove that Dolan made his statements with \u201cactual malice.\u201d As a legal term of art, actual malice is present when a defendant not only makes defaming and untrue statements, but when a defendant knows or should have known that the statements were untrue. This could be a difficult hurdle for Oakley to overcome.<\/p>\n

Lastly, it is important for Oakley to remember that truth is an absolute defense for Dolan. If Oakley does in fact have any of the issues that Dolan mentioned in his interview after the scuffle, Dolan would likely not be held liable for having committed any kind of defamation.<\/p>\n

Nick Aquart is a Sports Highlight Contributor for the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and a current first year student at Harvard Law School (Class of 2019).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 8th, retired New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from Madison Square Garden (MSG) during a Knicks-Clippers game. Oakley was charged with three counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of criminal trespass after he got into a scuffle with a number of MSG security officials. He is accused of striking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[199,99],"ppma_author":[382],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight","tag-defamation","tag-highlight"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZjrR-rs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":382,"user_id":39,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jsel","display_name":"JSEL","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4abb87a025d5a7951a4b4249facf4d22ea8002b216770229a96689038d0f83bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}