This dispute stems from a February 08, 2017 incident in which MSG security guards and New York City Police Department officers forcibly removed Charles Oakley from a New York Knicks basketball game at Madison Square Garden.
Defendants MSG Networks, Inc., Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., and Sphere Entertainment Group, LLC (collectively, “MSG”) filed a motion to preclude Plaintiff Charles Oakley’s proffered expert witness, Larry B. Perkins.
Perkins primarily contended that MSG’s security personnel should have given Oakley the chance to cure his behavior before ejecting him and that they should have encouraged Oakley to leave by using verbal de-escalation techniques instead of force. He also asserted that MSG failed to adequately train its employees and that with more robust training “security personnel would have known how to handle situations like these.”
Perkins’ proffered testimony falls into two main categories: testimony regarding MSG employees’ use of force against Oakley and their training in that field; and (2) testimony regarding MSG’s failure to give Oakley a chance to correct his behavior before ejecting him. Neither category of testimony can survive scrutiny under Rule 702.
Event Management Expert Witness
Larry B. Perkins is a professional event planning consultant with expertise in event planning, crowd management, crowd control, crowd flow, and venue security.
He is a 46-year veteran with executive leadership in public assembly, sports, and entertainment management. Perkins served as the 80th President of the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) from 2006 to 2007. During his 35+ years as an associate and member, he served on numerous Boards and Committees.
Discussion by the Court
A. Testimony Regarding the Use of Force and MSG Employees’ Training
1. Perkins’ Lack of Expertise
Perkins is not an expert on the use of force. In his deposition, Perkins admitted that he has never received “any formal training from law enforcement in the use of force,” “training on whether force can be used,” or “training on how to assess the level of force that is reasonable.”
He further explained that his purported area of expertise — the “public event management industry” — is “not really focused, necessarily, on the use of force,” but rather “on crowd management, subliminal messaging,” and “techniques” that help “create a positive fan experience,” not “on crowd law enforcement.”
Because any analysis or opinions unrelated to the use of force are irrelevant, the Court held that Perkins clearly is not “qualified as an expert in the reasonable use of force by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.”
2. Perkins’ Lack of a Reliable Methodology
Throughout his deposition, Perkins refused to commit to any particular methodology for assessing the use of force, emphasizing instead that everything “depends on what MSG security guards were doing with Oakley.” But that truism — that analyzing the reasonableness of the use of force depends on looking at the force used — is hardly the kind of precise expert methodology that would enable the Court “to determine whether Perkins had good grounds for his conclusions.”
Oakley attempted to sidestep this problem by arguing that Perkins is merely “applying his experience of crowd-management practice in a simple way to the evidence in this case.”
But while a methodology may be simple, it must also be clear. Perkins’ it-all-depends methodology has only vaguely discernible contours, and it boils down to exactly the kind of “intuitive and subjective” approach based on “logic” and “commonsense” that failed Rule 702’s requirement of “objective and testable principles and methods.”
3. Perkins’s Unreliable Application of His Methodology
Finally, even if Perkins could clear the first two prongs for expert testimony — i.e., the reliability of his expertise and methodology — Rule 702 would still bar his testimony because he “failed to apply his own methodology reliably.”
Here, Oakley characterized Perkins’ purported methodology as an analysis of “all surrounding facts and circumstances.” But Perkins failed to acknowledge facts that would undercut Oakley’s arguments, such as the physical contact that Oakley made with MSG security personnel Thomas Redmond and Jayson Jacknow.
And Perkins seemed to invent another fact that appears nowhere in the record: that Kori Keaton “threw a right-hand closed fist punch” at Oakley. Indeed, Perkins himself admitted that the screenshot on which he principally relies “did not show the closed fist itself.”
B. Testimony Regarding MSG’s Failure to Give Oakley a Chance to Correct His Behavior Before Ejecting Him
In his report, Perkins also criticized MSG’s decision to eject Oakley, explaining that an ejection for a “minor offense” is “highly unusual” and “certainly falls outside the norms of industry best practices.”
According to Perkins (and Oakley), MSG (1) should have objected to Oakley’s behavior when he first entered the seating area, (2) “passed along encouraging words to bring about a peaceful solution,” and (3) given him a chance to “correct any misbehavior” before removing him from the area.
But the question of whether Oakley had the “chance to correct any misbehavior” so that he could stay in the Garden is not at issue in this case. MSG indisputably had the right to eject Oakley for any reason. Instead, the only remaining material disputes relate to “(1) the amount of force used to remove Oakley from the Garden and (2) whether that force was objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”
Perkins’s opinion on whether MSG complied with industry standards when it decided to eject Oakley has no bearing on those questions.
C. Rule 403
Even if Perkins’ testimony regarding the events before Oakley’s ejection were relevant, the Court would still exclude that testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.
Perkins’ testimony here — even if it were relevant and based on a solid foundation — would risk unfairly prejudicing MSG, confusing the issues to be resolved at trial, and misleading the jury. In a case where the only remaining issues relate to the amount of force actually used to remove Oakley, and where that removal was recorded on several different cameras from several different angles, a third party’s vague evaluation of training policies and tangential events did not pass muster under Rule 403.
Held
The Court granted Defendants’ motion to preclude the testimony of Larry B. Perkins.
Key Takeaway
Even if it could be said that Perkins is an expert in crowd management, and that methods of crowd management are somehow tangentially relevant to the reasonableness of the force used against Oakley, his testimony on the subject would still be inadmissible because he did not employ a sound methodology — or even a clearly identifiable one. An expert opinion requires some explanation as to how the expert came to his conclusion and what methodologies or evidence substantiate that conclusion.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Oakley V. MSG Networks, Inc. |
| Docket Number: | 1:17cv6903 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court for the Southern District of New York |
| Order Date: | February 25, 2026 |
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