On May 23, process servers confronted Shaquille O’Neal once again, this time at an NBA playoff game at the Kaseya Center, home to the Miami Heat. On this occasion, lawyers who’ve been chasing the 7’2″ hoops legend for over four months claim, for the second time, that they’ve definitively and unquestionably served Shaq. But until now, the public hasn’t seen video evidence of the event itself. The plaintiff’s firms, Moskowitz Law and Boies, Schiller, Flexner, are suing Shaq in two cases, one for acting as a brand ambassador for now-bankrupt FTX alongside such famed defendants as Tom Brady and Larry David, and a second alleging that Shaq and his son illegally promoted an NFT project called Astrals.
Here’s some background to the brief clip that’s posted with this story: The video was taken by the process sever, using his cell phone. Shaq is seated in the broadcast booth on the second level of the Kaseya Center, ironically the onetime FTX Arena. He’s cohosting the pre-game show with Charles Barclay, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson Jr. (in bow tie). The process server waited pressed against a plexiglass barricade, holding the papers, until the broadcast finished. On that cue, the pursuer—obscured by the crowd in the video—stared down Shaq, catching his attention according to the attorneys, then tossed packets of papers from each of the two cases at the curved set where the Hall of Famer was sitting. Most of the action is blocked by the guards who surround the server, but you can hear him yelling four times at Shaq, “I’m a process server, you’ve got 20 days to answer!”
It’s unclear how close the papers came to Shaq. In any case, he didn’t pick them up, and a security guard scooped them up. The guard, stacks in hand, is shown in a still photo standing among the fans. Moskowitz Law and the Boies firm claim for a second time that Shaq has been legally served. But the saga may not be over. “We have no response, we haven’t heard from the other side,” Moskowitz partner Joey Kaye told Fortune. “But as the video shows, Shaq was properly served under federal law, which doesn’t require that the defendant take the papers in hand.”
This reporter emailed a lead attorney for O’Neal to ask whether his side is accepting the approach at the Kaseya Center as legal service. As yet, I have not received a response.
It’s arguably the most suspenseful episode in the annals of process serving, combining a usually omnipresent, instantly recognizable figure who, according to the plaintiffs’ counsel, virtually disappeared for months; key legal issues; and the most highly touted, controversial investment vehicle in decades. Now, all can watch a snippet of the surreal video to accompany the craziest of scripts.
