Mayor Adams’ first deputy mayor Randy Mastro can proceed representing Madison Sq. Backyard in its case introduced by NBA legend Charles Oakley, a choose dominated Monday.
The choose’s choice comes after Oakley tried to get the choose to disqualify the Adams administration official from defending the sector, arguing earlier this month Mastro’s continued illustration of the Backyard was in violation of the Metropolis Constitution.
However in a Monday afternoon ruling siding with Mastro, Decide Richard Sullivan wrote that there’s sometimes a excessive bar for an lawyer’s disqualification, and “Oakley plainly fails to meet that high standard of proof.”
FILE – Former New York Knicks participant Charles Oakley exchanges phrases with a safety guard through the first half of an NBA basketball sport between the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers, in New York’s Madison Sq. Backyard, Feb. 8, 2017. (AP Photograph/Frank Franklin II, File)
Mastro, a controversial lawyer and former Giuliani deputy, was named Mayor Adams’ new high deputy final month. He’s chosen to remain engaged on the MSG case regardless of that new position.
Sullivan wrote that Oakley’s legal professionals confirmed no examples of a choose disqualifying a lawyer based mostly on alleged violations of the Metropolis Constitution. The attorneys didn’t present a “factual basis” for his or her argument, both, Sullivan wrote.
Charles Oakley attends Michael Rubin’s Fanatics Tremendous Bowl social gathering on the Marquee Nightclub at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on February 10, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photograph by Ethan Miller/Getty Photographs)
Town’s Battle of Curiosity Board has decided there isn’t any battle so long as Mastro recuses himself from metropolis duties involving MSG, the choose wrote.
“Oakley has not established that Mastro’s continued representation of MSG while serving as First Deputy Mayor poses any risk of ‘taint[ing] the underlying trial” right here,’ Sullivan wrote.
Metropolis Corridor, Mastro and Valdi Licul, Oakley’s lawyer, didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Government chairman and Madison Sq. Backyard CEO James Dolan watches through the first half of an NBA basketball sport between the New York Knicks and the Sacramento Kings in New York, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2019. (AP Photograph/Kathy Willens)
The long-running go well with, filed in 2017, claims Oakley was unlawfully kicked out of Madison Sq. Backyard after getting right into a verbal altercation with James Dolan, the sector’s proprietor, at a Knicks sport.
Ethics watchdogs and elected officers argued the association was extremely problematic, on condition that MSG holds in depth enterprise pursuits earlier than Adams administration, together with points associated to tax breaks, which Mastro as first deputy mayor might train over.
