By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, October 2012
In mid-October 2012, Deadline.com reporter Dominic Patten filed an item about an Ari Emanuel lawsuit. The item was quickly pulled, and Nikki Finke posted what the original FishbowlLA framing called “the diametrical opposite of a TOLDJA!” — a rare public correction-and-apology.
Then
The Dominic Patten item had been part of Deadline’s expanded coverage of LA-area courtroom proceedings. The structural significance was the contrast with Finke’s editorial brand — a publication built on never-being-wrong confidence rarely issued corrections.
Ari Emanuel — the powerful talent agent, then co-CEO of WME — was exactly the kind of high-powered industry figure where an erroneous lawsuit item carried substantial reputational-and-legal risk.
Now
Nikki Finke left Deadline.com in 2013 and died in October 2022 at 68. Dominic Patten has continued at Deadline as a senior legal-affairs reporter.
Ari Emanuel oversaw the transformation of WME into Endeavor — the entertainment-and-sports conglomerate that went public in 2021 and was taken private again in 2024 by Silver Lake.
The 2012 piece reads now as a small documented moment of trade-press accountability — a rare correction from a publication whose editorial brand was substantially built on scoop-infallibility.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.