Spot the antecedent of “her” in this lead paragraph from SixShot.com:

A New York judge yesterday (September 22) dismissed a lawsuit filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Vibe Magazine over a picture that showed her topless at a party hosted by the Bad Boy mogul.

It reads as if “her” would have to refer to “judge”, but not so: it was hedge fund manager Maria Kristina Dominguez who sued the magazine and music celebrity. The judge threw out her suit, ruling that the “photo was related to newsworthy issues of public interest and Dominguez had no right of privacy while cavorting topless”. More on flasher’s remorse here, etc.

I’m on the panel of bloggers polled by National Journal in its “Convention Daily” feature. Other familiar names include Betsy Newmark of Betsy’s Page, Patrick Frey of Patterico, and Jonathan Adler of Volokh Conspiracy. It’s a secret ballot, so I’m not going to say how I voted.

Also, thanks to the U.K.’s The Lawyer for their kind words on our recent ninth anniversary (Jul. 7); they describe us as the “grand old dame presiding over the world of legal blogs”, which I’m afraid tends to conjure up Dame Edna. And a blog item by Ed Mendel at the San Diego Union-Tribune (Jun. 26) gave a mention to our brief Bill Lerach rebuttal item in Portfolio, for which thanks too.

A couple of other mentions in recent months: Jane Daniel quoted me in Publisher’s Weekly in an article on litigation against small publishers (”So (Don’t) Sue Me: A small press faces the wrath of an unhappy author”, May 12). And Keithius of CoreDump writes (Jul. 21) that he is “reading Overlawyered again. I stopped reading for a while because it just depressed me.” Let’s all try to cheer him up.

In a Maine federal case, the court ruled in effect that the book producer occupied a legal status more akin to that of a copy shop than to that of a traditional book publisher. As to the underlying dispute, Eric Goldman writes, “From my outsider’s perspective, it seems obvious that the Sandler and Calcagni families are locked in a cataclysmic downward spiral that will make some lawyers rich and will leave a lot of other people very unhappy for many years.” (Technology & Marketing Law Blog, Jul. 18).

…many commentators, and indeed, many fans themselves, operate on the rueful assumption that fan fiction does in fact infringe copyright.

Undaunted by this, Rebecca Tushnet, a professor of law at Georgetown University, and a keen fan fiction writer herself, wants to take fan fiction out of the legal shadows where it has operated, more or less at sufferance, for decades, and carve out a legal place for it within the US doctrine of fair use. She has recently helped found the Organization for Transformative Use, with the mandate to establish fan fiction within the parameters of legal, non-infringing use.

(Grace Westcott, “Friction over Fan Fiction”, Literary Review of Canada, Jul./Aug., via A&L Daily; our posts on fans as infringers).

Bradley LaShawn Fowler wants $60 million from Zondervan and $10 million from Thomas Nelson over hurt feelings from the editorial handling of the scriptural passages in question. Yes, the suits are pro se, and the judge won’t be appointing a lawyer at public expense to handle them, which still leaves the question of whether employing coercive legal process in such a manner should be free of a price tag in the form of Rule 11 sanctions. (”Man sues Zondervan to change anti-gay reference in Bible”, Grand Rapids Press, Jul. 9)(updated link should be working again).

More: Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Success has a copy of the hand-written complaint (PDF), as well as other commentary and links. James Taranto also comments. And Bill Poser, Language Log (via our comments), on the translation issues raised by the complaint.

“Oregon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Justia.com threatening a copyright lawsuit for republishing Oregon law.” Neither Greg Beck (Apr. 17) nor Ron Coleman (May 1) is much impressed.

…her colorful defamation suit (or was it an employment suit?) against News Corp. (Motoko Rich, “Ex-HarperCollins Publisher Settles Defamation Suit”, New York Times, Jan. 26). Earlier: Dec. 19, 2006, Nov. 20 and Dec. 3, 2007.

John L. Smith, whom the Las Vegas Review-Journal describes as its most widely read columnist, “has filed for bankruptcy after a two-year legal battle with Sheldon Adelson, owner of The Venetian resort. Adelson is suing Smith and his book publisher, Barricade Books, and alleging libel based upon Smith’s 2005 book ‘Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas.’ The Review-Journal was not named in the lawsuit.” Smith concedes the muckraking book contained inaccuracies about Adelson but takes issue with the tycoon’s claim of damages: “in the time since this book was published, Adelson has gone from 15th richest man in the world, according to the Forbes annual ratings, to sixth, so it’s hard to see how he has been harmed.” Barricade Books, associated with the late Lyle Stuart, also filed recently for bankruptcy. (A.D. Hopkins, ” Columnist pursues bankruptcy protection”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oct. 12) (via Romenesko).

For a brief period in 2004, Jessica Cutler was the hottest story in Washington. Cutler was the Senate aide who blogged at Washingtonienne about her sexual experiences with various Beltway insiders. After being exposed (pun intended), Cutler parlayed her notoriety into a six-figure book deal and Playboy photo shoot.

Unfortunately for Cutler, she had provided enough details in her blog for people to deduce the identity of some of her sexual partners. One of those, Robert Steinbuch, decided to sue her for $20 million for public disclosure of private facts (i.e., “invasion of privacy”) — thereby becoming only one of many recent examples of someone complaining about publicity… by filing a lawsuit that publicizes the acts he allegedly wants to keep secret.

In any case, Cutler began running into problems with her lawyers — namely, that they wanted her to pay them, and she had a different idea. We covered this in June 2006 (and see the Wonkette link in the comments). Now Cutler has filed for bankruptcy. Of course, we don’t know where all of her money went, but we know a good chunk of it went to her attorneys. Good luck collecting that $20 million, Mr. Steinbuch.

(As for collecting, Steinbuch had added some deep pockets to one of his lawsuits against Cutler — Hyperion Press (which published Cutler’s book), Disney (which owns Hyperion), HBO (which purchased the television rights to her story), and Time Warner (which owns HBO) — but that lawsuit, which Steinbuch filed in Arkansas, was dismissed in February on the grounds that it didn’t belong in Arkansas. Steinbuch has appealed, but his chances of success appear low, and his claims against HBO, Time Warner, and Disney are completely meritless anyway.)

Careful, you might wind up suing the cat (Alex Wade, “It wasn’t me, guv - I’m just the office cat”, Times Online, Mar. 9).

The lawsuit by an author who says her publisher, Penguin, steered her work against her wishes into “black interest” marketing channels is now online courtesy OnPointNews (complaint/answer, both PDF). The comments section on our original post (Jan. 24) has been busy indeed, and we’re continuing the discussion here.

Our post of Wednesday on an author’s complaint that Penguin Group steered her work into “African-American interest” marketing channels, although she would have preferred for it to be marketed as a general interest book, has spurred a somewhat heated discussion in the reader comments section. It also drew an informative comment in email from Charles Petit, author of the publishing-law blog Scrivener’s Error, which we’ve appended to the original post.

Many large bookstores carry sections devoted to works of African-American interest, and a number of book clubs and other specialized selling channels do a thriving business by specializing in black themes and authors. In October, however, Florida-based author Nadine Aldred, who writes under the pen name “Millennia Black“, filed a pro se lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan against her publisher, Penguin Group, on the grounds that Penguin (she alleges) insisted on steering her work into black-interest channels although she would rather have been marketed as a general-interest author. On the Wrong Side of the Alligator has reprinted excerpts from the complaint (Jan. 6).

The estimation of whether a particular author’s work will sell better if marketed to a niche or to a more general audience is inescapably going to depend on case-by-case judgment (assuming that marketing dollars and available cues of cover design, etc. are limited and cannot be dispatched in both directions at once). It is not immediately apparent why Penguin would not have an interest in taking a path that maximized its author’s sales. Aldred’s suit asks $250 million. See also Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Why book industry sees the world split still by race”, Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 6.

P.S. Disclosure, for whatever it’s worth: Penguin was my publisher on my first book (The Litigation Explosion).

More: Charles E. Petit of Scrivener’s Error writes to say:

The real problem in this instance is not with Penguin. The real problem is an antitrust nightmare: the book distribution system, which is probably the paradigmatic example of “one man’s antitrust is another man’s economy of scale”–at least until you look into the financing and terms of doing business, which makes me ask “What economies of scale?” The _distributors_ are the ones who demand “pigeonholing” of books, and Penguin’s best defense will be to point out that books that are released _without_ a category tend to stay in distributors’ warehouses unshipped. In other words, “We had to put _some_ category on it as a business necessity, and this is the one that in our commercial judgment was the best fit.”

In antitrust; Pittsburgh; pro se; publishers; The Litigation Explosion

The recent decision by News Corp. publishing subsidiary HarperCollins to cancel the publication of O.J. Simpson’s no-tell tell-all If I Did It is generating ripple upon ripple of actual and threatened litigation.  Last Friday, Dec. 15, News Corp. summarily fired Judith Regan, who made the Simpson deal and who would have published the book under her Regan Books imprint.  Notwithstanding her personal responsibility for one of the great debacles of contemporary media, Regan maintains she is the wronged party in the firing and has hired high-profile Hollywood lawyer Bert Fields to take on her former employers.

The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 18 - article is available to non-subscribers) reported yesterday:

But Ms. Regan is fighting back, hiring well-known Hollywood litigator Bert Fields.  ‘They’ve chosen war and they will get exactly that,’ said Mr. Fields in an interview.  ‘She won’t take this lying down.’

Mr. Fields said HarperCollins had used guards to lock down Ms. Regan’s office and had also impounded her personal belongings.  ‘We’ll take appropriate action for everything HarperCollins has done,’ added Mr. Fields.  ‘They chose this path and I hope they remember it.’  A HarperCollins spokesman said that Ms. Regan collected her personal belongings before leaving her office in Los Angeles and that her office in New York wasn’t locked and that her belongings weren’t impounded.

* * *

[T]his past week, tensions flared, although details are still sketchy.  One scenario has it that Ms. Regan made some intemperate remarks to a HarperCollins attorney on Friday afternoon, causing Ms. Friedman to fire her.  The termination was executed with none of the usual corporate pleasantries about "pursuing other opportunities" and long years of service.

In an intriguing sidelight, the WSJ’s Law Blog (Dec. 18) reports that attorney Fields is, or fancies himself, a Shakespeare scholar and has had two books published on Shakespearean subjects . . . through the Regan Books imprint.  (Oh no, no potential conflicts of interest there; let’s just move along.)

Fields is perhaps best known as the bane of the Walt Disney Company: he represented Jeffrey Katzenberg in the now-settled litigation arising from Katzenberg’s departure from the company, he was consulted by the Weinstein brothers of Miramax when their relationship with Disney cooled, and he has featured prominently in the seemingly never-ending dispute over the rights to Winnie the Pooh.  He has also been a subject of interest, but has not been the object of any criminal charges, in the investigations surrounding wiretapping and other alleged misdeeds by "private investigator to the stars" Anthony Pellicano.

News Corp., in preparing to respond to Regan’s and Fields’ accusations, has taken the unusual step of disclosing the content of otherwise confidential notes taken by one of its own attorneys.  Those notes purport to reveal anti-Semitic remarks made by Regan and claimed by News Corp. to have been the "last straw" leading to Regan’s firing.  (See New York Times, Dec. 19).

Meanwhile, ABC News (Dec. 18, via the publishing weblog GalleyCat) reports that Regan and others at Regan Books, HarperCollins and News Corp. will likely either be named as defendants or at the very least have their depositions taken on behalf of the heirs of Ronald Goldman, who continue to attempt to collect on their civil wrongful death judgment against Simpson.  The Goldman family sees the entire transaction as a further attempt to hide Simpson’s assets:

The lawsuit would likely be based on the legal premise of ‘fraudulent transfer,’ which in this case would contend that News Corp. executives knowingly conspired to assist Simpson in subverting a civil judgment against him.

And so the saga continues, with only the lawyers — and Simpson — seeming to gain from it.

~~~

UPDATE: The Smoking Gun (Dec. 19) has posted a copy of the Goldman lawsuit, to be filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and naming as defendants Simpson and Lorraine Brooke Associates, a corporation created (per the Complaint) to “warehouse Simpson’s intellectual property rights” and to serve as a conduit through which proceeds of those rights might be funneled to evade the Goldman judgment.

The New York Times has more on that dispute in which an L.A. boutique is claiming that Us Weekly is wrongfully failing to give it publicity (see Sept. 12). (Mireya Navarro, “The End of a Beautiful Friendship?”, Sept. 21). More: Ellis Henican, “Only in America: Suing to Be a Celeb”, Newsday, Sept. 20.

Some time ago, celebrity boutique and paparazzi-magnet Kitson had a legal dispute with Us Weekly magazine over payment for a book party the store threw for an Us editor. It was settled for a small chunk of change and a standard non-disparagement clause over the lawsuit. Us Weekly had the last laugh, however; it stopped covering the store in its magazine, to the point of cropping out the Kitson logo when publishing photos of celebrities shopping there. Or it thought it had the last laugh, because Kitson is now suing Us Weekly claiming a legal right to the publicity the magazine is withholding and alleging $10,000/week in damages from the loss of publicity. The Jossip blog has the complaint and somewhat more detail than the mainstream press account. (Andrew Blankstein, “Celebrity Boutique Sues Us Weekly, Saying Lack of Coverage Is Hurting Business”, LA Times, Sep. 12) (via Romenesko).

Virginia Postrel says Marvel Comics did itself no favors recently by taking a tough negotiating stance over The Atlantic’s proposed cover use of one of its images. (Sept. 6). I had no idea anyone was asserting trademark rights over the word superhero. (Corrected Sept. 10 to fix error about how The Atlantic was going to use the image — see comments.)

It was easy to sympathize with Richard Jewell, victim a decade ago of FBI bungling which led to his being falsely suspected in the Atlanta Olympics bombing. It’s not so easy to sympathize with his legal posture since then, which would be easily mistaken for an effort to vacuum the pockets of every media organization within reach. (Mark Fitzgerald, “Sob On Someone Else’s Shoulder, Richard Jewell”, Editor and Publisher, Jul. 25).