Last year, a judge trimmed away Musero’s contract claims—ruling that Penn independently created Main Justice after working with former A.G. Eric Holder—but kept alive his provocative breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim. The upcoming trial will wrestle with how far an agency’s discretion extends once a client has slipped from the priority list.

The inflection point came during discovery when Musero learned he’d quietly landed on CAA’s internal roster of “underperforming” clients and a separate watch list of potential client cuts. Musero argues that CAA should have pushed him for staff writing gigs on Suits and The Good Fight, among other complaints, and is seeking millions, alleging the agency cost him a critical window when momentum (and money) were within reach. From the witness stand, Sorkin will presumably back his former protégé by telling jurors that Musero had the right stuff—before, as the theory goes, someone inside CAA decided he didn’t.

CAA, unsurprisingly, sees none of its own behavior as nefarious. The firm has insisted that the “underperforming” and “cutting” lists were garden-variety internal tools in a commission business built on constant triage, not evidence of abandonment. CAA’s ace card? No buyer, studio, or showrunner ever knew Musero was on those lists. Whatever stalled his career, the agency will argue, it wasn’t some secret spreadsheet at the “Death Star” in Century City.

Meanwhile, as the plaintiff tries to turn this into a referendum on how Hollywood’s gatekeepers decide who gets their calls returned, expect CAA to keep steering the spotlight back to Musero’s reputation and track record. (Matt Belloni once wrote about Musero suing Sacha Baron Cohen for allegedly stealing an idea for Brüno.) As for Sorkin’s testimony, it’s an open question how the agency will handle a former client who quit it a few years ago after his rep posted pro-Palestinian support following the events of October 7.

No matter how the Musero trial turns out, CAA isn’t exactly on the ropes here. Scrolling down the agency’s legal docket—the knife fight over defectors to upstart Range Media, in which an arbitrator recently handed it a significant defeat; Julia Ormond’s litigation over sending her into a meeting with Harvey Weinstein; the anonymous plaintiff suing CAA and Jonathan Barnett, claiming the sports superagent lured her into becoming a “sex slave,” and so on—a disgruntled former client claiming his representation fell short doesn’t register as an existential risk.

But the trial likely will not lack drama—or the occasional amusing exchange. In pretrial skirmishing, both sides have been jockeying for latitude to school jurors on Hollywood custom and practice. Among the nearly three dozen witnesses (from prolific TV creator Marc Guggenheim to veteran executive Marc Graboff and a bench of current and former CAA brass), the most anticipated may be Peter Micelli—who, of course, ran CAA’s television department before decamping in 2020 to co-found Range, the source of the aforementioned arbitration headache. His overlap with this dispute is notably layered. Around the time Musero was trying to get his Main Justice project off the ground, he had a development deal with The Mark Gordon Company, one of Micelli’s former clients. Later, Micelli himself was said to have ordered and overseen the now-infamous “underperforming” list. And today, as C.E.O. of Range, he is entangled in the separate, high-stakes feud with CAA over its attempts to cancel the defectors’ equity.

Will Micelli use his time on the witness stand to land some blows against his former pals at CAA, which has referred to Range as an “unlicensed talent agency built on deceit”? Hard to say—Micelli didn’t respond to questions, and participants in the case are tight-lipped about his role here. But one small tell stands out: Unlike several CAA witnesses whom Musero plans to call, Micelli is not designated as “adverse.” Draw your own conclusions.

Even so, don’t expect this case to reorder the agency business. Instead, it’s likely to peel back the mechanics of how clients are prioritized inside the industry’s most powerful firms. CAA will be fine. The more interesting question is whether the legal footprints it leaves behind will make the next disgruntled client just a little more dangerous. I’ll let you know how this one plays out in court.

Thanks, Eriq. See everyone on Thursday…

Matt