Sports & Retail Law: Legal Analysis with Caitlin Carrigan

All right, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Overruled podcast brought to you by Scott Vicknair Law Firm. It is a great day in New Orleans and my usual co-host Brad Scott is too good for us. He’s in Italy this week on an Italian adventure with his wife Liz. I’m kidding, a much deserved vacation for Brad. And so welcome to the podcast to one of our senior litigation attorneys, a good friend of mine and a great member of the firm, Caitlyn Carrigan, is going to co-host today’s episode with me.

Very glad to be here. Brad’s loss is my gain.

All right, so we have, we’re going to jump straight into our hot topics for today. And we’ve got some really, really interesting topics to for you today to discuss. And I’m going to dive headfirst into one, Caitlyn. You know, it’s funny, Kyle came off this morning and was like, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re talking about today because the LIV Golf, PGA Tour, DP World Tour merger. How do I not talk about this? This is the big, big news. Just broke yesterday morning.

For those of you who don’t know that much about it. About, I assume it was nearly about a year and a half ago, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is usually referred to as the PIF. Invested in something called the LIV tour and created a competing golf tour to the true, to primary principal golf tours, which at the time were the PGA of America tour and then the DP World Tour, which was a controlling entity of the European Tour, etc.

Back in the day, when LIV was started, and people who follow golf, remember all the controversy was, people like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, big stars on the PGA tour, who left to go to LIV and got huge paydays, talking hundreds of millions of dollars, guaranteed to go play, which wasn’t really dependent on their performance, like it is in the PGA Tour. But we’re guaranteed significant monies and went to LIV, which was a totally different format, the PGA tour, it was team golf, etc.

And that’s been controversy for over a year now. Would Hadiy Miyamoto go, who was the big, big market for Asian golf, who’s on the PGA tour, would LIV lure him away, could LIV lure away Rory or Tiger, the big PGA players. And it’s been an ongoing battle on who would stay with PGA, who would go to LIV.

Just for those of you who don’t know, the public investment fund is an investment front for the Saudi Arabian government, which is the owner of the biggest oil company in the world or Saudi Aramco, and has hundreds of billions of dollars at its disposal for various investments. It’s invested some of its biggest holdings in the US economy, or Uber, Salesforce, Meta, FedEx, Lucid, one of the upstart competitor, competitors to Tesla. And so the PIF started this tour and then fired off in our arena, a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of California, and a trust lawsuit against the PGA tour.

Well, David, if I can interrupt you there, before you get to the fun legal component. Why, and for our listeners, David promised me that I wouldn’t have to talk about sports today, but because this is a little bit of a sexier sports topic, I agreed. My understanding of what PIF really looks at investing in it is its kind of a disruptor. So that they aim to invest in LIV, as to disrupt, specifically what has been a more traditional industry, being the PGA Golf Tour, which is for some of us who are not as familiar as David, it’s a bit antiquated or traditional in that sense. Whereas LIV came in and disrupted the whole scene of golf. Is that fair to say?

Well, that’s a fair, that’s what my 12-year-old tells me anyway. So I figured that was a good recitation of what it was. He’s a pretty smart 12-year-old. So he doesn’t, I don’t think he’s wrong.

I have, if we’re going to get into personal opinions on that. I think this, this topic hits so many different issues. It’s not just legal issues, which we’ll run through some of the lawsuits that were pending, and maybe some of the new lawsuits that we may see. But we are really, this also hits on antitrust issues with the Department of Justice. Whether the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC would approve this merger, which is all delving and hitting into this pit of like, geopolitical issues related to Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, Iran, and our country’s level of comfort of having certain amounts of investment from the PIF, which also then hits all kind of hot button issues related to the clear and unmistakable murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

And this was, it seems that was not that long ago. I think it was about four years ago, in 2018, when he was basically cut up at an embassy in, I don’t know, I forget the country that he was murdered in. By the Saudi Arabian government. And I’m pretty confident that our CIA has like clearly established that they were responsible for his murder.

And as well as hitting on hot button issues, obviously related to the 9/11 families who still don’t feel like Saudi Arabia was brought to account on the deaths of their relatives in 9/11. Which is a sensitive and hot button issue.

And so yes, I would say that the PIF does see itself as a disruptor, but I think I have like a skeptical view of it from the standpoint of like, I don’t think that Saudi Arabia, if you’re looking at what is their endgame with all of this stuff, what’s the big picture? Is it really investment? Sure, they want to make money. But they’re never going to run out of money as long as the world uses oil because they own Aramco. I think the latest estimate of what PIF was worth was 620 and 28 billion. That’s billion with a B.

So and he had, they, PIF has been quoted as saying, or the representative PIF has been quoted as saying that money is really not an issue. And when they were recruiting a lot of the PGA members, correct me if I’m wrong, but money was not an issue. That was the big draw in leaving the PGA to go to LIV.

And if I’m remembering some of the conflict between PGA and LIV that formed the basis of the lawsuits, the players’ lawsuits was that some of the PR that the PGA used to basically attack LIV and prohibit the players from playing in any of the PGA tours was because of the Saudi Arabia connection. And they just kept calling it the Saudi golf team, was what was quoted a lot.

Yeah, so Jay Monahan, who’s the chairman, or the, the, essentially representative and director of the entire PGA, which has a board and different, executive officers, C-suite officers. He, you know, is getting raked over the coals right now because back in June of 2022, multiple interviews, with him, essentially shaming the players who went to LIV and attacking LIV for their 9/11 connections. And, and kind of hitting them from this superior perceived position of the moral high ground, like it was you’re dirty taking their money.

And not just him saying it, if you go to the lawsuit in the Northern District of California, their lawyers and the counter claim.

So LIV sued, originally sued and there’s multiple lawsuits now, which people may not be honest, as a lawyer and a golf fan, like I was unaware that there were multiple lawsuits other than the one in the Northern District of California, there were. They’re now four federal cases pending associated with all of these allegations.

But what it all started with was the one lawsuit that LIV filed in the Northern District of California, claiming that the PGA Tour of America was a monopoly and violated American antitrust laws. I read an article, I think they put monopoly in their complaint like 15 times. That word.

And then PGA tour counterclaimed against the PIF, Al Rumayyan, and LIV, and made various claims against them, in that underlying proceeding in the Northern District of California.

Since then, there has been a discovery dispute that spun out into the Northern District of Virginia against McKenna Advisors, who is an American consulting firm to LIV. And then a separate lawsuit which LIV filed, which I wasn’t aware of, in the Southern District of Florida against the DP World Tour, and was making various claims in that. That’s a whole litany of discovery motions that have been being fought in the Northern District of Florida, where LIV has refused to comply with the judge’s discovery orders and claimed sovereign immunity and international laws, the fact that they don’t have to comply with discovery when they filed the lawsuit.

That’s convenient. Wish we could use that in some of ours.

I know, I was like, the PGA’s lawyers must have been salivating. Oh, so you get to file a lawsuit. But then when we issue certain issues of discovery, you raise sovereign immunity and international laws as a basis not to have to comply.

That’s right. I’m going to use that one tomorrow.

But, it’s my understanding that in this merger that a lot of those lawsuits between the two forces, if you will, are being resolved or mooted by the merger. Not that doesn’t apply to the Department of Justice investigation, obviously. But my understanding is that is part of the was part of the attractiveness of the deal between the two forces.

I think so. Certainly the, the current lawsuits and that’s something to talk about, right? What would come next? If, what’s going to come next from a litigation standpoint?

From a litigation standpoint, obviously, if the parties in all of this litigation, or LIV, the PIF, the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, Al Rumayyan, all of those parties are in favor, it appears from the initial public reporting of this merger, so those lawsuits will certainly go away, right? Be mooted if the merger goes through.

However, just to hit on a legal issue before we move on to what lawsuits are potentially to come and what regulatory action could come from the federal government is, LIV is really going to be in an interesting spot now because they, in, in federal pleadings, have asserted, have studiously now taken the position that the PGA Tour of America, on its own, was a monopoly and violated antitrust law. I think they called them a golf monolith. So that’s a that’s something that sticks with you.

This proposed merger will now take the, who they claimed was a monolith and LIV, who was a competitor, admittedly, and DP World Tour, who’s a separate entity, and merge them all together.

So, I’m no antitrust lawyer. But I do like to think I have a little bit of legal common sense and I would suspect that the proper party with an appropriate with legal standing is in a unique position to potentially seek an injunction or other type of legal action to stop the merger based on antitrust law issues or sue to break it up after it happens. Claiming that now it has like super monopoly, if all this new entity would control the entire market of golf. And so I don’t know where that would fly from, right?

Well, and it’s kind of for a non-golf aficionado, it’s kind of strange to think about golf in this context specifically. You know, you think more any trust when the Department of Justice Department of Justice shot down the spirit and JetBlue merger. That to me is more typical of where you would think they would get involved. But here we have golf. You know, it’s being played on loop at my house on Saturdays and Sundays and you don’t necessarily think that something the Department of Justice is going to get involved in. But I agree with David, wholeheartedly, is that from a legal standpoint, you know, they almost don’t have a choice.

Yeah, I think also the thing that’s going to be interesting to watch, because we’re talking about this about what Ryan thought about, which I’m not, one of. So for y’all who don’t know, Ryan is Ryan is my oldest son and, much to his grandfather’s chagrin, is not as interested in golf as he, as he could be. But he’s getting there. And this certainly kind of appeals to a little bit of drama, which has been really not present in golf as long as I’ve known it to be around.

Yeah, well, I think the thing the aspect of it from the DOJ standpoint is this. I have a skeptical view personally of the PIF. I don’t think it’s about making money at all. I think it’s about strategically placing Saudi Arabian investment in certain assets and unique markets, being Europe and the United States. So that Saudi Arabia over the next 50, 100, and 150 years is making their investments and their country such an integral part of our economy and the fabric of our economy. That when there are military or ethnic and religious conflicts in that region of the world, that we will be so leveraged to them that we will have no choice but to make decisions that are based upon economic levers and pressures.

Hmm, when did that happen last? Anybody remember what happened with China and COVID? And now we’re decoupling or trying to decouple and pull our manufacturing out of China.

So that, I only comment on that from the geopolitical perspective, not to necessarily take a side, but to say that’s what’s going to be discussed at the Department of Justice. And whether or not they are going to file antitrust legal action to stop the merger. And whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will get involved at either the president or the CIA or the FBI’s urging to stop Saudi Arabian investment for whatever geopolitical reason it may be in such a traditional pillar of American economy and way of life as the PGA tour.

So that’s why I think there’s like so many more dominoes to fall on the legal front. From the government, right? The government could certainly stop it or potentially file actions to stop it. And I’m almost 100% confident those conversations are happening with assistant attorneys and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, right? We know that’s happening and they’re discussing it right now.

But I also thought it was interesting is, you know, you have the other side of this, like a Tiger Woods, who took turn down or reportedly $750 million to go to LIV. You have Rory McIlroy, who turned down reportedly, these are all reports, $500 million to go to LIV and say with the PGA Tour. What is their standing or their causes of action if they’re not, if this merger goes through and they’re not comfortable that they were put in an appropriate financial position by the PGA’s merger to sue the PGA tour? And what would their causes of action be?

I mean, part of the problem, right, is we don’t have their membership agreements with the tour to know what rights they would have.

No, but I’m even curious aside from their legal rights, just personal rights. I mean, I know that the PGA kind of put Rory out there as the spokesman for some of their publicity and marketing against LIV when some of his colleagues were being recruited. And, you know, to his credit, he was, I think very respectful, the entire time that this debate was going on and was very vocal on behalf of the PGA and loyal to the PGA.

So now you have what is arguably one of the greatest employment moves by some of the other players and that they abandoned ship, got multi-figure, multi-million dollar signing bonuses for it. And now they’re being put right back in the PGA where their colleagues who stood by the, the company, stayed the whole time. So to me, it’s almost a personal affront and I’m kind of curious now that I’m involved in this, and I’m unwillingly. To see what kind of statements come from some of those loyal PGA players, in their stance, even if it isn’t escalated to a legal statement yet.

Again, I agree with David, as I think that is certainly something that they’re probably going to explore, to make sure that they’re on the same footing and compensation wise.

Yeah, I think the interesting thing is really going to be to see what Tiger and Rory say, for not to discredit some of the other prominent stars, like Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas. But I would say that out of the last year and a half and issues with LIV, that Tiger and Rory really did sort of step up to the plate for better or worse, no matter what your opinion is on LIV or the PGA and all that drama. Because there’s lots of opinions.

I mean, you could say to Rory’s credit, there’s tons of people out there hitting Rory saying that his position is ridiculous for attacking these people to go to LIV and get paid and take a, take a payday. And if you just think about it in a purely, non-like golf emotional standpoint. Like, you’re at a job and another company comes and says, take more money. Yeah, here’s $100 million guaranteed. Are you going to really have the moral fortitude to say, well, it’s 5% of your whole holdings are by the PIF and I have moral objections. You know.

So, well, they still take Ubers. So that’s okay.

Yeah, and then obviously, like the Uber, like the Uber, all that’s a little different, right? Because the Ubers and all the world are publicly traded companies. They can’t really stop an accredited investor from buying their stock on the exchange unless that investor is blocked. But anyway, not to go down that rabbit hole.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Tiger and Rory say. And what they do. And whether or not, I’m also assuming, as we talk about like, there’s lawyers at the Department of Justice talking about antitrust law and whether they’re going to try to stop this. There’s also antitrust private lawyers who are probably courting the kind of players who can afford a million, two or $3 million legal bill, like Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, or Tiger or Rory and saying, you have legal standing. You should file suit to stop it, if you want.

And that’s another interesting legal avenue is like as I thought about this topic and read all the articles I was reading to prepare for our discussion, what players may or may not have legal standing to file a lawsuit on antitrust grounds and stop it. Ultimately, right? Like we just said, it’s really tough to give a legal opinion on what their standing may be and what their rights may be without knowing what their players’ contracts say with the tour.

Well, and another reason I think we’d be curious to see what it says, and I did not realize this, but until again, looking into this to talk about the podcast today, but PGA is player run. And so I didn’t really understand what that meant in that context. But in looking into it more in depth, it means that they have a lot to say in the in the competitions that they participate in, the decision, the decisions of the PGA. And as far as I know, this deal was generated without the input of the players who supposedly run the PGA.

It was. And I’m kind of interested to see some of the backlash, you know, some of the players were already using social media to comment, you know, a little bit passively aggressively about how they found out about the deal going through, which I thought was interesting as well. Just in that, if they are supposed to be involved in these decisions, and now all of a sudden you have a merger which creates this, this one entity, if you will, with the exclusive investor being PIF, and I also read that PIF also has, in the deal that PIF negotiated, the first right of refusal for investments for future investments. So I thought that was very interesting and to see how this merger deal is going to be written.

Not only in the context of what the DOJ is going to be interested in regulating, but also what the individual players of the player run PGA, how that’s going to translate to this new organization to see if those things are going to say consistent, essentially.

And that’s an interesting point you made about the right of first refusal and future investment, because this kind of came up in me discussing it, yesterday evening with a close friend of mine. From the standpoint of, will the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission or the DOJ make decisions on trying to kill it? Based upon, so now it’s being proposed as PIF being the minority owner. So they’re not having control. But it’s almost like one of those things that you’re going to let the fox in the hen house because then, how much leverage do they have to stop a Saudi Arabian entity from controlling the PGA Tour of America in future deals? Once they’ve gotten a significant chunk of ownership.

And so I think those are the considerations that in the discussions that will be happening at the DOJ and the SEC related to the merger. But I also don’t rule out that there will be private lawsuits filed by the players. And that could be very interesting.

I did have to giggle when I looked. I mean, you know, I love dry humor. And you’re talking about the players being like sarcastic on social media. And I think the funniest thing, at least that I saw, I was scanning it quickly, to see what some player reaction was, is Max Homa, who’s he’s in the top 10 in the FedEx standings right now and a popular social media guy. He said something along the lines of, and now that we’re all friends, because they have not all been friends and they’ve been fighting for like two years. Can we go back to can we go back to work shopping these team names, because LIV has the team names and he’s got like the screenshot of the Google search, what is a clique? Because it’s like the LIV team names are like ridiculous. Some of them, I don’t even know what it means.

So I thought that was pretty just funny and humorous. But, the player reaction is going to be fascinating.

But as a lawyer, right, I am like really interested to see both on the private lawsuits and the government potential lawsuits and regulatory actions. Like, how is this whole melting pot of personal opinions, geopolitical issues, antitrust law, golf, Saudi Arabia, is a lot to unfold before this whole merger goes through. And it’s going to be, until one of my friends asked me about it yesterday, he said, just get your popcorn ready. It’s going to be interesting.

That it is. And as a mom, I’m going to be interested to see if my little one is going to play golf now. For those signing bonuses, you might have a job.

If he does, if he does, your husband will be happy with me. I know that.

All right, so I’m going to kick it over to you now, Caitlyn. What topic do you have for us today?

So David, when I was looking into this, I, you may or may not be familiar with this as much as I was familiar with golf. But one of the most popular athletic brands, I’m sure a lot of our female listeners are familiar with it, is Lululemon. If you are not familiar, Lululemon is kind of, I don’t want to say new on the scene anymore, but within the past five to seven years, really kind of changed the way women view athleisure. If you’re even familiar with that.

I thought you were going to say, when you say if you weren’t familiar with, I thought you were going to say expensive.

It is, it is not economically priced. I will say that much. And when it hit the market, that was one of the areas that, people were shocked that you would spend upwards of, you know, 90 to $100 on what is essentially workout gear. But it kind of changed the landscape of how men and women both approach athleisure and what’s more acceptable. And throughout the course of COVID, I think, people got away with it a lot more because it’s looked at as more of an outfit.

I know for one, it’s really what I hang out in on the weekends and haven’t braved it to wear to work yet, but I just might. But when Lululemon is actually coming under fire lately, because of a recent theft. Unfortunately, that’s not something we hear in New Orleans are immune to. In one of their Georgia locations, they’re located in a very high-end shopping area. And they had a string of thefts, presumably from similar, similar thieves, if you will, over the course of several weeks that the thefts happened on seven to 10 different occasions.

And two of their employees, actually, in this particular case, were fired for engaging in the theft.

So apparently Lululemon, along with a lot of other big-name retailers, have what’s called a zero tolerance theft policy. And it’s not what caught my attention, what I thought was interesting about this is when you think zero tolerance theft policy, what I automatically thought is it means we have no tolerance, we have no tolerance for theft. We will stop any and all thieves. Well, it’s quite the opposite. Come to find out, these zero tolerance theft policy means that they do not prevent the theft in their retail outlets.

And so initially, it’s it’s sounds crazy, right? Why would they have this kind of policy? Why would other international retailer stores have this similar policy? But they are putting safety of their employees at the forefront of the theft. The CEO Calvin McDonald has stood by the firing of the two Lululemon employees in saying that they, because of their policy, and because they have such a strong interest in furthering this policy, they are standing by the firing of these two employees.

It’s not because the employees called 911. It is because they engaged in the theft. And Lululemon’s limit, Lululemon’s policy is that they put the safety of their employees and their customers at the forefront. He was quoted as saying, look, you know, do we, do we promote theft? No, but it’s just merchandise at the end of the day.

What did I had this question as I kind of like was briefly reading about this. What did they do? So the thieves in this particular instance, ran into one of the, you know, the stores are beautifully arranged obviously to catch your eye and make you want to spend Because, because it’s expensive. They make you think that you need to spend $100 on workout gear, even though you don’t work out. But, so they, the stores are arranged in a way that you have some displays up front, so the thieves ran into the front doors of the store, grabbed the merchandise off the front and ran right back out. And this has happened in this particular store and what this whole issue centers around, what do them, I don’t want to interject.

What do the employees do?

So this is the situation. What do they are supposed to do according to Lululemon’s policy is nothing. They are supposed to wait until the theft is completed and then call 911 to not scare the customers, not put themselves or the customers’ lives at danger. In this particular case, the two employees who were terminated have done some local interviews and whatnot and it appears that they kind of, I don’t want to say chased the employed the thieves, but said, hey, stop right there, just go ahead and get out of the store. But it’s because these particular thieves had been in the store on numerous occasions, within a short amount of time.

And so Lululemon is taking the position that engagement with the thieves is against their policy, which puts customers and employees safety at the forefront. And interestingly enough, David, I looked into some of the other stores that have this policy, and what’s surprising about it is that it’s because of instances that employees have, basically involved themselves in these, in these thefts, if you will, and have been injured. Drastically so in some circumstances.

So there is actually a bill being passed in the California State Senate right now that prohibits employers from even suggesting that their employees engage or involve themselves in thefts. Because of the consequences of what can happen.

What basically is the issue here is what’s called a shrink. That’s a term that’s used in retail therapy outlets to assign a loss value to theft, fraud, employee mistake, things like that. And shockingly, it is worth an annual $94.5 billion right now. Which is these retailers are going to have to figure out a way to go about this and these policies are an attempt, I don’t think to stop the theft, but to place their employees’ safety at a higher priority than this shrink rate. Which I thought was, was absolutely crazy to say that this is how much is being, is being stolen on an annual basis. That’s an insane amount of money.

I guess one thing, one thing our listeners are probably thinking right away is what is somebody’s legal option if they are terminated from the outside looks like a good deed or having some courage to try to stop somebody who’s committing a crime. And I can just say from the Louisiana standpoint, most of the time, these retail workers who are in a store, doing this type of work, they are considered at will employees. Meaning, an employer can terminate an at will employee for any reason whatsoever under Louisiana law, which is not a discriminatory purpose, meaning age, race, a sexual orientation, whatever is protected by the ADA.

So depending upon the laws there, and I think you said the stores in Georgia, it’s likely I’m assuming that Lululemon has no legal liability for terminating them for this, especially if it’s in contravention of their employment policies. But I guess it does raise like a larger societal, like legal issue, which is are they encouraging theft by the thieves, knowing that they have a no engagement policy? And what are the consequences of those types of bills, right? And that’s going to be crazy because if, you know, if you’ve looked into this kind of thing, you’ll see that there are there are strings of thefts where there are small scale or large scale.

They’re called, I think blast robberies where you have 10 to 12 people go into a high-end luxury store and steal handbags off the shelves that are worth several thousand dollars a piece. And so they end up running out of one store with, you know, thousands of dollars worth of inventory versus, you know, a smaller scale like the Lululemon theft where they probably walked out with $900 worth of Spanx pants. And things like that are being sold on the black market.

But one of the interesting things that I think that stores are trying to do, you know, and this kind of goes back to one of our previous podcasts, if you all haven’t listened to it, Brad mentioned AI and how that is having its place in, you know, various industries and this is an industry where we are starting to see AI. Which I thought was interesting.

So Lowe’s, in fact, has a, a trial run where they are using AI robots in one of their Philadelphia locations. So the AI robots are not only being used to help cater to some of the theft, but they’re also being used as you can probably assume, to gather customer data. So these AI robots have or on a 24-hour camera spool to monitor what’s going on in the store. They take thermal imaging, they scan license plates in the cars. That’s all more towards the theft component, but they also monitor what customers are wearing, their shopping habits, things like that all at the same time.

So this is something where some of the retailers are being, are looking to implement this as a theft reduction. I don’t think it’s, it’s such, it’s in its infancy stages right now, so I don’t really see how that’s worked out. I guess I have some healthy skepticism. Are they using the AI for theft reduction? Or are they using the AI to collect more customer data with the view of theft reduction to limit the blowback?

But, you know, one thing I have that comes to mind for me is if there are going to be tons of laws enacted, which prevent companies from having policies which allow employees to try to stop theft, right? It’s one thing for Lululemon to take this position and seemingly say they’re trying to protect the employees and, you know, it’s just inventory. Then Lululemon is one of the higher end type of sportswear brands, right? Like, and so I would assume have higher margins.

And maybe it costs them $10 landed to do a piece of Spanx that they’ll sell for $90 or $100. So I’m just taking a guess. So I’m assuming they have much higher margins than a lot of people in retail. And so how does that really impact people with less margin? And the companies and the small businesses, who pay more distributors and middlemen that cuts into the margin before the final product goes out. Like how do they afford to stay in business if a law goes into effect of that nature and prevents them from trying to interrupt and stop theft. And then they then it, you know, it just kind of happens, these, you know, what you call the, the string of robberies happen more and more, if there’s that’s a potential corollary effect, like could it put businesses out of business?

It can. And now, you know, when you say that and speaking about this topic with a friend of mine, you know, when you think about it on a local level, you know, there’s a lot of small businesses, especially here in New Orleans and that’s something I always try to support and whatnot. And interestingly enough, there was an incident several months ago with a local business, located right here on Magazine Street, so a boutique business, who like David said, probably had lower margin and is more dependent upon their individual sales. And so they encountered a situation in which there was a robbery, a blast robbery, where several individuals walked into the store, tried to steal merchandise, and coincidentally, one of their store managers had a military background.

And so got involved in the theft and was able to stop the theft essentially. And then there was also a off-premises security guard who got involved as well. And so the manager took a step back and, you know, let the let the law enforcement do what the law enforcement was being paid to do. But unfortunately, one of the thieves got a hold of the law enforcement officers weapon and started to use it on the crowd in the area. Which is a very for those of you who aren’t familiar with Magazine Street, it’s a mixed commercial and residential area.

And so there’s at any given time, there’s a lot of people walking up and down it. It’s, you know, it’s a very popular area for tourists. And so that is a dynamic that I think the local stores are going to have to look into. And fortunately, for that particular store, just given the background of that individual employee, he was able to stop it in action. But, you know, I don’t think that’s an option for everybody given just who the demographics are of the employees or the or the customers.

And so that’s something they’re going to have to look at and I don’t know whether or not we’re going to be seeing robots running up and down Magazine Street anytime soon. But what’s all and it’s also, we haven’t even hit on how that affects a business who has lower margins. That isn’t like a sportswear retail clothing that may have higher margins like a restaurant or a bar, if they’re caught up in more of that and they have no ability to try and stop it on a proactive standpoint.

But it is really interesting because we have not talked about yet. And you’re right, all the discussions that we’ve had about AI technology and its implementation in different businesses and industries, we really haven’t hit on how is AI going to be used to collect and colate customer information and data along with potentially security, whether it be cyber security or theft security in this context. And Facebook and Zoom and all these different companies who have had repeated data security and privacy issues, right?

Absolutely. And it’s interesting that you say that because I’m and given the context of using AI, which, you know, David knows me personally, I’m terrified about it. And working very hard to implement it into my practice. But I am less hesitant when it’s used in something like this, like in a security basis. You know, for instance, we here at the firm have, everybody’s familiar with hurricanes and what happens during hurricanes and during Ida, the city of New Orleans itself and the surrounding areas, unfortunately, lost power for a significant period of time.

And so we here at the firm have clientele who their commercial businesses were actually subject to robberies during Ida. And so for instance, if, if there was a widespread adoption of these AI robots for security purposes, that are not run on electricity, you know, what’s to say that the robots couldn’t be standing outside the store during the loss of energy to monitor the store. And so that’s something that we’re helping our clients overcome unfortunately. But, you know, to say that there’s a balance there between the use of AI and providing security measures that might even help mitigate some of these detrimental losses to these business owners, I think that’s going to be an interesting dynamic to watch how it plays out.

Yeah, and it’s an application I hadn’t really thought about, but we are seeing that debate in the public, spill out from people like Elon Musk calling. We’ve talked about calling for tighter regulation. And there is like a concern with AI, like it is a slippery slope. Where does it stop? We have to harness the technology and have controls in place to where we don’t have like a, I robot, situation where we’re the inferior race. That’s all I think of every time.

So, we’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. Really interesting topic with Lululemon. But well, alright, great topic, Caitlin.

I think we’ve had some really interesting topics today, talking about both the PGA tour, DP World Tour and Live Golf merger, along with Lululemon’s theft issues. And, I guess to show our listeners that laws really involved in everything from Spanx to golf. It really is.

I mean, my key takeaway from the PGA tour discussion is like, stay tuned. Like let’s see what the Department of Justice with the SCC and what private lawsuits may file out there from players who may or may not have standing to try to challenge this proposed merger. It hasn’t reached the finish line yet. It’s just proposed. To try to stop it or if they are going to wait to file after. My guess is somebody is going to try to stop it and file before ahead of time, if there is going to be any significant player in that world, to try to stop it on antitrust grounds. So it is going to be interesting to watch that play out. Everybody should look out for that.

And on the Lululemon thing, my big takeaway, and I’ll let you kind of give yours, is to see how AI technology is going to be implemented for security measures and what laws to be looking out for related to the state, whether it be individual state governments regulate employers being able to let employees get involved in stop theft.

Sure, sure. And I think I for, given my, my knowledge of golf prior to this, I would say that my takeaway from the PGA live merger is that it interests a whole new generation of non-golfers, if you will, to kind of follow along and see what happens. I mean, it takes golf, to a whole other level in a business perspective that I think some of us haven’t given it credit for beforehand. And so, you know, maybe they’ll be a Bravo spin-off before we know it. And then you’ll see a whole new demographic of followers.

I don’t, I don’t see Andy Cohen really, putting his teeth into the golf.

Oh, you must be waiting to see the Housewives of the Live Tour coming on play.

Which also interests me in Lululemon. I’m interested to see how that works out. And, and like I think everybody, I’m kind of on, you know, cautious but excited about AI to see how this can possibly help or hurt businesses and especially here locally in New Orleans and our clients that we help represent. So if there’s, I’m liking to see how that plays out.

Awesome. Well, thanks for being here, Caitlin. Thanks for co-hosting with me. Can’t wait to have you back. We’ll have you back very shortly. Thanks Brad for going to Italy. Oh man.

And, and so, you know, I’ll say, much more positive topic than Brad is usually like scaring people on this show. So it’s been nice to have a refreshing topic from you and have you helping me co-host the show.

Thanks to all our listeners. Thanks for being with us. I hope you enjoyed the discussion today. Once again, this has been the Overruled podcast brought to you by the Scott Vicknair law firm. Can’t wait to see you next time. And we’ll talk to you later. Thanks all.

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