Conor McGregor whiskey brand dispute to proceed next week
A judge has said he is reluctantly allowing a High Court hearing to go ahead next week regarding a dispute over a claim for a percentage share in a whiskey brand founded by Conor McGregor.
Artem Lobov, a former sparring partner of Mr McGregor, is suing the MMA fighter for what Mr Lobov says was an oral agreement in 2017 that he would get a 5 per cent share in creating the brand which he says he came up with the idea for.
The Proper Number Twelve Irish whiskey brand was sold in 2021 to Proximo Spirits for a reported sum of up to $600 million (€530 million) and Mr McGregor was reported to have received $130 million from the sale.
Proximo cut ties with Mr McGregor and the brand following last year's separate High Court action in which a civil jury found he should pay almost €250,000 for raping a woman, Nikita Hand, in a Dublin hotel in December 2018. That decision is being appealed.
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Mr McGregor denies Mr Lobov's claims that there was any agreement for him to have a share in the brand.
On Thursday, the case came before Mr Justice David Nolan for mention to see if it was ready to proceed next Tuesday. Eight days have been set aside for the hearing.
After hearing that there had been a delay by the Lobov side in lodging pre-hearing legal submissions to the court – which resulted in the defendant not being able to reply to them – the judge said he was concerned the case was not ready to go ahead next week.
Liam Bell BL, instructed by Dermot McNamara & Co Solicitors for Mr Lobov, said his side would have its submissions in by close of business on Thursday. He said the delay was due to his lawyers having to get further instructions for the case.
Shelley Horan BL, instructed by Michael Staines & Co Solicitors for Mr McGregor, said the Lobov side submissions were due to be in at the end of February but had not arrived. However, she agreed with Mr Bell that the defendant's submissions could be put in at the end of the case as this was a matter that would be determined on the basis of evidence to the court.
Mr Justice Nolan said however that whatever judge hears the case, he or she will need to have the legal submissions of both sides beforehand.
Ms Horan said the Lobov side had been 'in dereliction' and her side had been chasing them for their submissions. However, this was a 'net issue' case in which the plaintiff seeks specific performance of an oral agreement which is denied, she said.
Her side did not think the judge who hears the case would be prejudiced by not having the submissions, she said. This was an unfortunate situation not of the defendant's making but they were anxious to get on with the case, she said.
The judge said he did not think the case was ready to go ahead but it was with 'great reluctance' that he would allow it to proceed next week. He also said the delay in having submissions in on time would have to be dealt with when the judge who hears the case is dealing with who pays the costs.
Mr Lobov, who was born in Russia and lives in Mulhuddart, Dublin, claims he came up with the idea that Mr McGregor lend his name to a new whiskey brand.
He also says he did all the research and negotiations to get Cork-based distillery firms to agree to produce the whiskey before the project was taken over by Mr McGregor's manager and chief executive of Paradigm Sports Management, Audi Attar, along with American entrepreneur Ken Austin.
He claims he was effectively 'muscled out' and that Mr McGregor acknowledged his involvement when he made Mr Lobov an offer of US$1 million which he refused.
Mr McGregor strongly denies the claims.
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Irish Times
35 minutes ago
- Irish Times
House raffles are a big, beautiful, awful sign of the times
'There are days I am still in disbelief that it happened and it actually happened to me. I don't want to say I believe in miracles, but I always try and give it a go to see what happens. I'm over the moon,' delighted homeowner Imelda Collins told The New York Times this week. The miracle she had experienced was not, although you might be forgiven for making the assumption in this broken housing market of ours, managing to buy a house , but succeeding in selling one. Collins's joy becomes a bit easier to understand when you see the figures involved. A two-bedroom cottage on 1.75 acres in Leitrim which she bought three years ago for €133,000 and spent €147,000 restoring has just grossed her €1.2 million. She did this by selling it in an online raffle hosted by a UK-based company, shifting 206,815 tickets priced at €5.92 a pop. The €1.2 million doesn't go straight into her pocket – there were marketing costs of €25,000 along the way, €2,600 in affiliate fees, and she has agreed to pay the winner's stamp duty and legal fees as part of the prize. Raffall, the lottery agent she chose (there are several based in the UK, where the raffles are classed as 'prize competitions'), takes 10 per cent. Then there's 33 per cent capital gains tax. READ MORE She had hoped to net €400,000 after costs on a house she reckons is worth €300,000. Instead, she'll walk away with over half a million – more than enough to fund her planned move to Italy. Collins is so thrilled by her success, she's considering abandoning plans to teach English and become a full-time internet marketer. The winner, Kathleen Spangler, a 29-year-old US marine corps officer, is ecstatic too. Coincidentally, as she told The New York Times, she applied for her Irish citizenship through lineage on her father's side last year. Raffall must also be chuffed with its 10 per cent. And even the losers are only out by €6 each. This can be read two ways: as the a heart-warming tale of a clever woman using her entrepreneurial flair and marketing skills to shift a house in Leitrim for four times its value and simultaneously making a young family's dreams come true. And no one really loses out; at least, not by very much. Or – miserable killjoy that I am, the way I can't help reading it – as a bleak statement about the housing dystopia we are experiencing. House raffles are a big, beautiful, awful idea. Their popularity is a grim reflection on a property market in which your best prospect of owning a house may well be to win one in a lottery. In 1984, George Orwell wrote about the lottery run by the Ministry of Plenty as a way of preventing 'the proles' from dwelling on the misery of their existence. 'It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant.' [ How to give yourself the best chance of buying a home amid Ireland's housing crisis Opens in new window ] If the odds of today's house lotteries are not as small as in Orwell's world, where the largest prizes do not exist at all, they're still less than spectacular. The majority of houses put up for raffle do not meet the minimum threshold of ticket sales. Raffall's founder and chief executive Stelios Kounou told The New York Times that 18 houses have been sold so far on the platform, while 50 others did not make their target. House lotteries may feel like a contemporary antidote to a modern affliction, but they are not a new idea – though the last time they got this level of attention might also have been the last time decent housing was this difficult to access in Ireland. In 1948, a giant house raffle was held in Dublin by the government of the day, when families on the social housing list were offered a chance to win one of between 220 and 250 brand new houses in Ballyfermot, according to historian Cathy Scuffil, who says there were lines of prams up and down Dawson Street. 'Every time somebody's name was called out, a big cheer would go up,' she said. Occasional 'newly wed draws' were held up to the 1970s for recently married couples on the housing list in Dublin. As a means of getting on the housing ladder, it probably beats bidding against wealthy Americans on a cottage in Leitrim. Today's house lotteries often inspire scepticism online, though, unlike in Orwell's dark vision, the prizes are real – a house if enough tickets are sold, a pile of cash if they're not. That is a fairly big qualifier. If the minimum number of tickets are not sold, the owner can cancel the raffle and keep 40 per cent of the funds and the house, giving 50 per cent of the cash to the winning ticket holder. Or they can give the house away anyway and keep more of the money. In Collins's case, if she had not met her goal of 150,000 tickets, she planned to give 40 per cent to the winner. [ Dolores McNamara: Whatever happened to the €115m lotto winner? Opens in new window ] On Raffall right now, you can buy a ticket for a semi-d in Yorkshire, apparently being raffled for the second time ('after the previous winner received the alternative huge cash prize option'), a villa with a pool in the Algarve or a beachfront villa on the island of Samui. Presumably most sellers are well-meaning people who want to try to pay off their mortgage, but it is not terribly difficult to imagine someone unscrupulous setting a wildly unrealistic ticket sales target – and pocketing 40 per cent of the cash when they don't make it. Still, browsing the listings, it's hard for even this sceptical prole to resist the temptation to splurge €6 on a ticket or two.
Irish Times
35 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Boston rape case: The full story of Dublin firefighter Terence Crosbie's trial
After a six-day trial and more than 22 hours of jury deliberations, a Dublin firefighter arrested on rape charges in a US city last year remains behind bars, his fate still in limbo. A Boston judge declared a mistrial and the jury 'hung' on Friday, sending the jury of eight men and four women home, and Terence Crosbie (38) back to the Nashua Street Jail. If a retrial moves forward, Mr Crosbie will once again face charges for raping a 29-year-old attorney. The alleged assault was first reported to authorities by the woman at a hospital in the early hours of March 15th, 2024. READ MORE The night began at The Black Rose, an Irish pub in the city on one of the busiest nights for the bar, leading up to St Patrick's weekend. The Black Rose Irish pub in Boston The woman alleged she returned to the hotel room of a Dublin firefighter she met at the bar for a night of consensual sex. She was with a man she described as a little shorter than herself, bald, white, with an Irish accent and who authorities later identified as Liam O'Brien. Mr Crosbie and Mr O'Brien had travelled to Boston as part of a Dublin Fire Brigade contingent that was due to march in the city's St Patrick's Day parade. The woman claimed she fell asleep in the other bed and woke up to another man who 'was not bald' but who 'also had an Irish accent' raping her. The man, she claimed, mocked Mr O'Brien and insisted that she 'wanted it'. All this occurred to the 'dull background soundtrack', as a prosecutor put it, of Mr O'Brien's continuous snoring. 'Our nightmares belong in our sleep,' prosecutor Daniela Mendes told the jury in her opening statement on the first day of trial. 'Her nightmare began as she woke up.' Throughout, Mr Crosbie was steadfast in his insistence that he was wrongly accused and had been held behind bars for 15 months, unable to make bail or afford living costs in the foreign country. 'I'm going to ask you to consider Mr Crosbie's nightmare. I'm going to ask you to end that nightmare,' said defence attorney Daniel C Reilly in his closing argument to the jury. The assault allegedly took place at the historic Omni Parker House, the hotel made famous as the location where a young US politician named John F Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier. The case was heard blocks away at the Suffolk Superior courthouse, an art deco relic with marbled hallways and wood panel courtrooms in the heart of Boston. The Omni Parker House hotel in Boston The jury heard testimony from the woman and Mr Crosbie, with assistance from a transcript, at times, to parse Mr Crosbie's accent. His defence team alleged the woman was a 'less than reliable reporter due to intoxication and memory lapses'. They argued that she did not remember Mr O'Brien's first or last name or having ever met Mr Crosbie. They made insinuations about her promiscuity and questioned her about psychiatric medication on the stand. On the other side, the prosecution alleged Mr Crosbie's testimony was 'rehearsed and insincere'. The woman was the prosecution's first witness. She testified that on Thursday, March 14th she had been hosting a social work gathering, went to a restaurant with colleagues afterwards and then to The Black Rose with a coworker. In cross-examination, Mr Crosbie's legal team asserted she had been out drinking for more than 10 hours. Dublin Fire Brigade member Terence Crosbie (centre) alongside his defence lawyers Daniel C Reilly (left) and Patrick Garrity during his trial in a Boston court. Photograph: Susan Zalkind A witness for the defence – Dr Chris Rosenbaum, who serves as the director of medical toxicology for Newton Wellesley Hospital – testified that the complainant reported a 'prior history of binge drinking' in her medical documents and that her blood alcohol level at the time she reported the assault the next morning can 'correlate with memory loss and impairment'. He said she could have been almost three times the legal driving limit at the time of the alleged assault. Prosecutors argued that she had her wits about her. They played CCTV video of The Black Rose from the evening in question. In the witness box, she pointed herself out in the video to jurors as the individual dancing 'very awkwardly' and trying to get others to join in. She said Mr O'Brien and his colleagues were wearing T-shirts identifying themselves as members of the Dublin Fire Brigade. CCTV video later showed her and Mr O'Brien entering the hotel, just before midnight, taking the elevator and walking towards room 610. Other video footage showed Mr Crosbie walking to a lobby area on the sixth floor, adjust the chair and scroll through his phone for the next two hours. Terence Crosbie. Photograph: X The woman said she didn't know Mr O'Brien had a roommate. CCTV video and hotel records later supported Mr Crosbie's testimony that they met briefly at the bar and he was briefly in the room when the woman and Mr O'Brien first arrived, and that he 'read between the lines' and quickly left the room. She testified that after having sex with Mr O'Brien she went to the bathroom and left the light on. When she returned Mr O'Brien was already asleep and taking up the majority of the bed, so she got into the other bed and fell asleep, intending to leave and work from home the next day. She told the court she 'woke up to somebody on top of me' raping her, she told the court, in tears. 'This person was taller than Liam and was not bald and I could hear Liam snoring,' she said. The woman testified that the man, who prosecutors said was Mr Crosbie, also disparaged Mr O'Brien, while assaulting her, saying that Mr O'Brien 'can't even do this for you – what a loser'. She testified that she could feel his weight on top of her and she told him to 'stop!' But he didn't, the court heard. When she eventually managed to manoeuvre her legs off the side of the bed and break free, and started to collect her clothes, she testified that Mr Crosbie continued to follow her around the hotel room, trying to kiss her. She said she went to the bathroom and that Mr Crosbie tried to get in and 'was jiggling the handle' after she locked the door. Under cross-examination, defence attorney Mr Reilly noted that she initially reported that the assailant was about her height and her testimony did not include details about Mr Crosbie's birthmarks or tattoos. 'I was trying not to look,' she said. The prosecution noted that she texted a friend at 2.18am as she left the hotel. 'I hate everyone,' she wrote. 'What the f*** is wrong with people.' 'I woke up and a guy was inside of me telling me I wanted it and telling me how pathetic it was that his friend couldn't give that,' the court heard. She then walked home, changed and went to hospital, bringing the clothes she wore in the hotel. There she reported the rape. DNA analyst Alexis Decesaris testified that the evidence collected from the woman was 'consistent' with there being 'two individuals' separate from her who were both male. There was a high likelihood that one of those male profiles belonged to Mr O'Brien, the court heard, but due to the limited amount of material collected it was unclear if the second set of male DNA, obtained from the woman's genitals, was deposited by Mr Crosbie. The defence argued that the testing 'did not identify Terence Crosbie's DNA'. Prosecutors argued that the finding of two male profiles matched the woman's account. The jury heard from Mr Crosbie twice, in a recorded police interview before his arrest, and as the concluding witness when he took the stand in the trial. 'I 100 per cent didn't do this. I've done nothing wrong,' Mr Crosbie said. 'I had no physical or sexual contact with her at all.' He said he knocked on the door when he returned to the hotel and shouted for Mr O'Brien. He said the room was dark and he 'heard no reply'. He said he used the torch on this phone to find his way to his bed and the complainant wasn't there. 'There was nobody in my bed, my bed was empty,' he told the court. He said he brushed clothes off his bed, and crawled under the covers in his boxer shorts. About a minute and a half after he got into bed he testified that he heard someone 'rummaging around the room' and assumed the woman was collecting her things to leave. He disputed the woman's account that he called Mr O'Brien a loser; this was not 'an Irish term' that he would use, he argued. Mr Crosbie claimed he attempted to fly back to Dublin on an early flight home because he was 'scared like a rabbit in the headlights' after being questioned by police. When Mr Crosbie took the stand, prosecutors also played a portion of his interview with police that had been previously redacted in which he told detectives he had masturbated in the hotel room and asked whether his DNA could have got on the complainant that way. A pair of Mr Crosbie's underwear with semen on it was later collected as evidence. In cross-examination, prosecutors pointed out that Mr Crosbie would not have had time to masturbate alone in his room until after the alleged assault. Mr Crosbie's defence team stressed that his story about masturbation was 'hypothetical'. In closing arguments, prosecutor Erin Murphy told jurors that they 'might not agree' with or 'relate' to the complainant's choice to go to the hotel with Mr O'Brien but that it was 'her choice'. 'That doesn't mean that that man's hotel roommate gets to rape her,' she said. Mr Crosbie is not the 'unluckiest man in the world; he is the man who raped [the woman] and he is the man who got caught', she told the jury. Mr Reilly argued that prosecutors had not met their 'high burden' of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 'I suggest to you there are multiple reasonable doubts in this case,' he said.
Irish Times
35 minutes ago
- Irish Times
TV guide: The Bear returns, and the other best new shows to watch on RTÉ, Disney+, and Netflix this week
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Murder on the Doorstep: The Killer Clown Wednesday, Sky Crime & Now, 9pm Dan Reimer, who features in Murder On The Doorstep: The Killer Clown In the 1990s, a young woman, Marlene Warren, was shot dead on the doorstep of her own house in Florida by a mystery assailant. The killer had dressed as a clown to disguise their identity, but police immediately suspected Marlene's husband, Michael Warren, of his wife's murder. Their marriage was in trouble, and there were rumours of extramarital affairs, but Michael had a rock-solid alibi and the police had no proof, so he was eliminated as a suspect. Nearly 30 years later, though, police make an apparent breakthrough, charging Michael's alleged mistress Sheila Keen with Marlene's murder. But is there more to this murder than meets the eye? This three-part docuseries looks back at the investigation, interviewing investigators, witnesses, friends and family members in an attempt to unravel a very tangled web of lies and betrayal. Glastonbury 2025 Live Thursday, BBC One, 10pm The BBC's live coverage of this year's Glasto in Pilton, Sussex, kicks off on Thursday, but all this week the Beeb will be airing programmes in anticipation of the big weekend, beginning with three half-hour specials featuring Glastonbury legends from the 1970s (Monday, BBC Two, 10pm), 1980s (Tuesday, BBC Two, 10pm) and 1990s (Wednesday, BBC Two, 10pm). Clara Amfo and Lauren Laverne will be on hand at Worthy Farm to look forward to the fun in store for the weekend, which will see headline performances on the Pyramid stage by The 1975, Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts and Olivia Rodrigo. If you haven't got tickets for the festival, the BBC's coverage of the onstage action will be almost as good as the real thing – and a lot less mucky. Streaming Countdown From Wednesday, June 25th, Prime Video Countdown: Amber Oliveras and Mark Meachum A dead Homeland Security agent, a secret taskforce and a terror plot that could end in millions of deaths: maybe I won't have another consonant after all, Rachel, thank you very much. Jensen Ackles from The Boys heads the cast of this action-thriller series created by Derek Haas, the mind behind the FBI series and all its variants. Ackles is the LAPD cop Mark Meachum, who is recruited into the taskforce after the Homeland Security guy is murdered in broad daylight. The murder is just the tip of the iceberg, and soon Ackles and the team are racing to stop the bad guys from turning the citizens of LA into DOA. The Bear From Thursday, June 26th, Disney+ The Bear Chef-patron Carmy Berzatto is back in kitchen hell in the fourth series of the foodie dramedy, and he's still in pursuit of excellence in the former sandwich shop in Chicago that he inherited after the suicide of his brother, Michael. Carmy, a Michelin-star chef, has turned the dive into a fine-dining restaurant, but success is far from a done deal. Money is running out, and the kitchen is still in chaos and turmoil. Can Carmy create a calmer atmosphere in this culinary crucible? Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmy, with Ayo Edebiri, Oliver Platt and Jamie Lee Curtis among the cast. Squid Game From Friday, June 27th, Netflix How much of a gaming junkie do you have to be to go back into a game that could end in your death? In series two of the hit Korean series – Netflix's most successful non-English-language series – Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) went back into the game with a clear mission to take down the faceless organisation behind this murderous, macabre theme park, but in this third and final series he finds himself back in the Squid Game dorm after the failure of his attempted rebellion – and this time the games have been taken to even deadlier levels. Gi-hun must survive this last round and also outwit his treacherous adversary the Frontman as the tournament reaches its bloody, adrenaline-pumping climax. Smoke From Friday, June 27th, Apple TV+ The Rocket Man star Taron Egerton heads a strong cast in this new crime series about an arson investigator in pursuit of two serial pyromaniacs. Joining Egerton in the series – based on a true story – are Rafe Spall, Jurnee Smollett, Anna Chlumsky, Greg Kinnear and John Leguizamo. Egerton plays the investigator, with Smollett as the detective who becomes his reluctant partner; they'll have to find common ground if they are going to stop the firestarting spree before it gets completely out of control.
