Skater, Agent Square Off : Hamill Contends That Firm Has Conflict of Interest

Airing yet another in a series of conflicts between celebrities and their agents, figure skater Dorothy Hamill has become locked in a nasty legal fight with International Management Group, the world’s largest sports marketing and management company.

Hamill accuses Cleveland-based IMG of self-dealing, improperly taking $75,000 from her and negligently destroying videotapes of the “Nutcracker on Ice,” a ballet in which she starred and which she and her husband produced for NBC.

IMG, for its part, paints Hamill--the 1976 Olympic gold medalist and four-time world professional champion--as an ingrate who is trying to avoid paying commissions that IMG earned legitimately.

In a sweeping complaint filed this month in Riverside County Superior Court in Indio, Hamill charges that IMG has used its size, its international reach and its pervasiveness in all corners of sports to create a huge “company town” in which she and other athletes are manipulated and exploited for IMG’s gain.

The dispute comes on the heels of legal charges by such celebrities as comedian Roseanne Barr Arnold and producer Barney Rosenzweig against their Hollywood agents.

As owner and organizer of sports events, producer of their television coverage, adviser to companies that sponsor the events and agent for athletes who perform in them, IMG has so many inherent conflicts of interest that it can’t represent its athletes properly, Hamill alleges.

Not so, IMG says.

“When Dorothy Hamill came to us in 1986, 10 years after her Olympic gold medal, she had zero endorsements and almost no money,” said IMG executive Robert D. Kain, who was Hamill’s representative at IMG and is now a defendant in Hamill’s lawsuit.

“Six years later,” Kain added, “she has five major endorsement deals with national companies and is doing great financially. We brought her back.”

IMG’s relatively low public profile belies its immense power and influence in sports. With yearly revenue of $750 million, the firm employs 1,300 people in 45 offices in 20 countries. It was founded in 1960 and is still owned outright by Mark H. McCormack, a Yale-trained lawyer whose first client was golfer Arnold Palmer.

Among others, the firm represents tennis stars Andre Agassi and Chris Evert, golfers Nancy Lopez and Nick Faldo, quarterback Joe Montana and skier Jean Claude Killy. It promotes three of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the British Open golf championship and dozens more major sports events. Pope John Paul II hired IMG to promote his 1982 visit to the United Kingdom.

Trans World International, IMG’s wholly owned television division, claims to be the world’s largest independent producer of sports programming. TWI invented and produces “The Skins Game” golf competitions and “The American Gladiators” series--both huge TV successes.

For all its size, IMG has not been involved in many legal conflicts with either its athletes or former employees. Beyond portraying IMG as very aggressive, several people who have either worked for or done business with the company had little negative to say in recent interviews.

All of which makes the Hamill case unusual.

The fight started last spring when Hamill, 35, who lives in Indian Wells, quit IMG after disputes over the “Nutcracker” videotapes and $75,000 deducted from her accounts at IMG. In July, the firm sued her in Ohio federal court for allegedly breaching her contract and refusing to pay commissions she owes.

Hamill responded Aug. 1 with a complaint to the California labor commission, which regulates talent agencies. She argued that her contract is void because IMG has been acting as a talent agency in California without a license. She followed that complaint with the suit in Indio, seeking unspecified damages.

In the Indio suit, Hamill said that Kain in the late 1980s “negotiated a reduction in Hamill’s fee for participation in the World Pro Figure Skating Championships and the World Challenge of Champions from $100,000 per event per night to $70,000--reporting that he had done the best he could do.” The suit alleges that Kain never disclosed that IMG is 50% owner of the events.

“We didn’t bring this on. I’m just trying to defend myself,” Hamill said in a telephone interview. “I think the issues are important not just for myself, but for the kids who aren’t Olympic champions.”

Kain acknowledged that Hamill’s tapes were erroneously destroyed--”every company makes mistakes,” he said in an interview--and that IMG took the $75,000 from her accounts.

But he said Hamill had owed IMG most of that money since late 1989, when, “out of our own pockets and out of the goodness of our hearts,” IMG paid off $45,000 worth of debts that Hamill’s production company had incurred in a money-losing live presentation of “Nutcracker on Ice” in Minneapolis.

The other $30,000 was IMG’s fee for providing Hamill’s company with assistance in a 1990 production of “Nutcracker on Ice,” also in Minneapolis.

As to IMG’s role in negotiating Hamill’s fees for participating in IMG-owned events, Kain said: “The conflicts in themselves aren’t bad--it’s just how you deal with them.”

Before IMG started creating events such as the World Pro Championships, “there was nothing for a pro skater to do except Ice Capades and maybe a kiddie show,” Kain said. “If somebody else was offering a competition she could’ve done instead of ours (and) if I had withheld that, that would’ve been bad. But there was nothing else out there.”

George R. Hedges, Hamill’s Los Angeles attorney, said Wednesday that Kain’s responses are emblematic of “the incredible amount of arrogance” shown by IMG. “To unilaterally take money from your client because you think you’re entitled to it is a classic breach of fiduciary responsibility,” Hedges said.

“I’ve managed a lot of big people and nobody has ever accused me of taking money,” Kain said Tuesday. “And this is Chris Evert and Bjorn Borg--big people, a lot bigger than Dorothy Hamill.”