Lattinville, Heligman among CAA agents let go

NFL player and coaches agent Bob Lattinville and player marketing agent Mark Heligman were among the five CAA Sports employees let go last month in connection with the firing of former CAA Football co-head Ben Dogra.

Also losing their jobs were NFLPA-certified agent Kyle Evans, marketing agent Jonathan Stuart and coaches agent Dave Zwart. All five worked closely with Dogra at the agency. The dismissal of several employees who worked with Dogra had been reported, but they had not been identified until now.

A CAA Sports spokeswoman confirmed that the five were no longer employees of the agency, but declined further comment.

Lattinville, Heligman and Evans did not return calls to their cellphones, and attempts to reach Stuart and Zwart were also unsuccessful.

DOGRA

All five of those employees were “at will” employees and have not been accused of doing anything wrong, Hardin said.

The five worked at CAA Sports’ St. Louis office, where Dogra was based as one of three co-heads of CAA Sports’ powerful NFL player representation practice. The other two co-heads are Tom Condon, based in Nashville, and Jimmy Sexton, who works out of Memphis.

Dogra, who joined CAA Sports in 2006, represents about 50 NFL players, including some of the highest-profile players in the league, so the circumstances around his firing are a subject of great speculation in the industry. Although Hardin said CAA Sports has not informed him of the cause, he reiterated last week that he believes the agency fired Dogra for cause so it wouldn’t have to pay him for the last two years on his contract.

“This looks like they thought Ben was going to leave and they tried to beat him to the punch,” Hardin said.

But Hardin said he does not know for certain if that is the reason, and it is unclear how Dogra could have left CAA Sports, since he had a long-term contract.

As for the other five employees who were terminated, Hardin said, “I think they were just picking out people who Ben was close to, that they thought might go with him.”

On the day that Dogra was fired, Nov. 13, a security guard hired by the agency showed up at the St. Louis office early in the day, while Dogra was on a plane to Los Angeles to meet with Creative Artists Agency President Richard Lovett and general counsel Michael Rubel, Hardin said. An employee in the St. Louis office reached Dogra on the plane and told him that the security person was there, Hardin said. Dogra went to the meeting at CAA in Los Angeles and was told he was fired for cause.

“Later in the afternoon a lawyer from New York and an HR person from Nashville from CAA come in and tell everybody [in St. Louis] that Ben has been fired with cause,” Hardin said. Then, they asked about “seven or eight” employees who were close with Dogra to give them their cellphones and were told that both their phones and their computers would be scanned.

The next day, Nov. 14, four of those employees — Lattinville, Evans, Stuart and Zwart — were informed by CAA Sports that they had been terminated, Hardin said.

The fifth, Heligman, was fired about a week later, after he turned down an offer from CAA Sports to stay, Hardin said. Heligman has represented some of Dogra’s best-known NFL clients, including Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III and suspended Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, for marketing work.

The St. Louis office is still operating, and last week an agent there, John Caplin, signed the one player who had terminated Dogra as his agent since the firing, Eagles wide receiver Jeremy Maclin. Caplin, a marketing agent who last year was certified to represent NFL players in contract talks with clubs by the NFL Players Association, will co-represent Maclin with Condon.

Dogra has received a lot of interest from agencies that want to hire him, but he was not close to any decision on that last week, Hardin said.