The entertainer and her father/manager are being sued by video maker Speedfit over her refusal to give approval for the release of a tape in which she starred in a multi-million contract. Speedfit owner Alex Astilean says that by blocking the video’s distribution, “They are hurting millions of fat people in America.” (“Page Six”, New York Post, Feb. 19).
Posts Tagged ‘movies film and videos’
“Twelve Angry Men”
Our roundup link to a discussion of the classic jury-deliberation movie stirred up a considerable discussion among David Bernstein, Ilya Somin, Orin Kerr and commenters at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Web disputes of the future two weeks
A popular blog meme is the Mingle blog rating (e.g. Bainbridge, Opinio Juris). You won’t see it here: movie ratings are trademarked by the Motion Picture Association of America, and they come down like a hammer on those who use the trademarks, and this blog-meme not only uses the letter rating, but the actual MPAA symbol. Unfortunately, US trademark law forces the MPAA to take a heavy-handed approach, because of the alternative: forty years ago, they did not seek trademark protection for their new “X” rating and as a result, the rating became a generic symbol for hard-core pornography (and infantilized the commercial moviegoing public: because now most theaters and brick-and-mortar video stores refuse to offer anything rated harder than “R”, we no longer get such movies, unlike the early 1970s when major studios would make X-rated movies with stars like Marlon Brando or Dustin Hoffman).
(And how well does the blog meme work? Well, the gizmo shares the MPAA’s left-leaning sensibilities: we got bumped to a “PG” because of multiple uses of the word “gun.”)
Roundup – June 10, 2007
Here’s a Hollywood-themed edition of our irregularly-scheduled roundups:
- When Sacha Baron Cohen accepted his Golden Globe award for Borat, he famously thanked all the Americans who hadn’t sued him “so far.” Subtract one person from that list; a New Yorker identifying himself as John Doe, who clever people quickly outed as businessman Jeffrey Lemerond, has now filed a lawsuit, claiming that he was humiliated by his appearance in the film. (Has anybody ever tried compiling a list of people who claimed they wanted privacy but filed lawsuits which exposed their secrets to a wide audience?) The Smoking Gun has the complaint. (Previous Borat suits: Dec. 2005, Nov. 9, 2006,Nov. 22, 2006)
- A Beverly Hills store has settled its lawsuit against Us Weekly for refusing to give it free publicity. (Previously: Sep. 12, 2006, Sep. 22, 2006)
- Carol Burnett’s lawsuit against the Family Guy gets tossed. (AP) On Point has details and the judge’s opinion. (Previously: Mar. 21.)
- Two for the price of one: A couple of weeks ago, attorney Debra Opri sued her former client, Anna Nicole Smith-impregnator Larry Birkhead, for unpaid legal fees. Opri was last seen on Overlawyered sending exceedingly large bills to Birkhead, including thousands of dollars in cell phone charges.
Now, Birkhead is suing Opri for conversion, fraud and malpractice. He claims that she took at least $650,000 of money owed to him for various appearance fees and has refused to return it; he also claims that Opri told him she was going to represent him for free in exchange for the publicity she’d receive, and then turned around and billed him hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, I’m sure this won’t turn into (yet another) media circus. (AP, TMZ.)
- Judd Apatow, director of the movie Knocked Up, is being sued for copyright infringment by a Canadian author who claims he stole her book for his screenplay.
A few months in, Eckler says she’s worn out by the litigation. “Here’s what it comes down to: 1) Being a writer, especially a Canadian one, without access to an unlimited bank account, sucks. 2) Copyright infringement is highly technical and difficult to prove. 3) Universal/Apatow know they have resources I do not have, and that every time they simply do not return my lawyer’s phone call, it costs me money.
She also complains about her treatment at the hands of her first lawyer, who was referred to her by Apatow’s lawyer. (WSJ law blog; commentators at Volokh seem skeptical of the merits of her claims.)
- Eleven year old boy, Dominic Kay, who directed a 15-minute movie starring Kevin Bacon, settles lawsuit against his neighbor, who helped finance the movie. “Kanter met Kay when her son played with him on a soccer team.” (L.A. Times)
So you want to be in pictures
Did you ever watch a movie and think, “I could have made that movie”? Well, if actually making the movie proves to be too difficult, here’s an alternative strategy: you could just write to the Internet Movie Database and demand that they give you credit for having produced it. But, unfortunately for those of you who like to take shortcuts, it turns out that IMDB has this silly policy of only crediting people for their work on a movie when those people appear in the movie credits.
So, there’s always Plan B: sue IMDB. That’s what David Kronemyer did. He wanted to be credited as executive producer of hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, B-movie Wishcraft, and TV-movie Stand and Be Counted. (I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve actually seen Wishcraft; I think the people who should sue are the ones who did get blame credit for making it.)
Fortunately, this story had a reasonably happy ending: Kronemyer was sanctioned by the California judge hearing the case for bringing a SLAPP suit, and ordered to pay $6,270 to the IMDB to compensate it for attorney’s fees. (Although, as Shaun Martin notes, that probably doesn’t fully compensate the IMDB.) The fact that Kronemyer had virtually no evidence to support his demands presumably didn’t help his case; he had a document showing that at one time he might have been involved with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and nothing at all for the other two movies. But this complete lack of evidence didn’t seem to deter Kronemyer; he actually appealed the lower court’s dismissal of his lawsuit. The court of appeals wasn’t impressed (PDF).
Kronemyer represented himself, so it might seem unfair to blame lawyers for this one — except that Kronemyer’s a lawyer himself. Well, sort of; he actually resigned from the bar with unspecified disciplinary charges pending.
“Free expression gets smoked”
Bowing to pressure from 32 state attorneys general to curb the depiction of smoking in movies, the Moving Picture Association of America has just conceded “the basic principle that public-health lobbyists and politicians should have a big role in deciding what people will see, instead of letting the industry merely cater to its audience.” But state governments “have no more business determining what appears on movie screens than they do in deciding what goes into Judy Blume’s next novel. …The MPAA’s response validates the politicians in their intrusions, and beckons them to find new ways to regulate art and other matters that are supposed to be exempt from their control.” (Steve Chapman, syndicated/Orlando Sentinel, May 21). More: Michael Siegel, May 11, May 16, May 17; Jacob Sullum, May 16. Earlier: Sept. 1, 2003.
“My first DMCA takedown”
“Candid Camera”
Apparently the long-running show was sued very little, if at all, by victims of its hidden-camera stunts. Was that because, as host Allen Funt maintained, the show’s spirit was genial rather than sadistic, in contrast to more recent shows? Or because its liability releases (presumably proffered to the victims after the embarrassing stunt had been sprung) were more likely to be upheld? Or just because people then weren’t as primed to sue? (Ann Althouse, Jan. 20).
As Seen on TV: Why Americans Hate, and Yet Love and Trust, Those Pesky Lawyers
UCLA School of Law professor emeritus Michael Asimow has published a paper pondering an apparent contradiction in American’s views of lawyers and the adversary system:
Lawyers and lay people in the United States generally believe that the adversary system is the best way to deliver justice in a civil or criminal trial. Broadly speaking, adversarial procedure leaves most critical pre-trial and trial decisions such as discovery, the framing of issues, choice of witnesses, the questions directed to witnesses, and the order of proof in the hands of lawyers. The central precept of the adversary system is that the sharp clash of proofs presented by opposing lawyers, each zealously representing the interests of their clients, generates the information upon which a neutral and passive decisionmaker can most justly resolve a dispute. In contrast, legal systems outside the Anglo-American world employ inquisitorial pre-trial and trial procedures that leave critical elements of the process under the control of a judge rather than the attorneys.
* * *
The unquestioned dominance of the adversarial system seems paradoxical because the general public despises and distrusts lawyers. In an ABA poll conducted by M/A/R/C Research, only 14% of the public were extremely or very confident in lawyers and 42% were only slightly or not all confident. People had far more confidence in judges: 32% were extremely or very confident in judges and only 22% had slight or no confidence in judges. Why, therefore, would people want to turn over something as important as control of the pre-trial and trial processes to lawyers whom they thoroughly distrust, rather than to judges whom they distrust much less? Why would they prefer a system whose objective is to generate ‘trial truth’ rather than real truth, substantive justice rather than procedural justice? This article speculates about some possible solutions to these puzzles. [Footnotes omitted; emphasis in original.]
Professor Asimow suggests that attitudes toward the real life adversary system have long been shaped by the stories of purely fictitious advocates. "Popular culture has taught us that the adversarial system uncovers the truth about past events. According to familiar pop culture narratives that we absorb from the cradle onward, lawyers working within an adversary system are champions of justice and liberty."
Asimow’s Exhibit A is the greatest criminal defender of them all, Perry Mason. Exhibit B? A rather less polished upstart from the outer boroughs of New York:
A staple of lawyer movies is the brilliant cross-examination that destroys a lying, deceptive or mistaken witness and reveals the truth. Although many such movies are instantly forgettable, some are exceptionally vivid. Just to name a couple, take the immortal My Cousin Vinny. Vinny Gambini has recently passed the New York bar exam (after numerous failures) before traveling to Alabama to defend his young cousin and a friend in a murder trial. Vinny is clueless about Alabama culture and criminal procedure, but nevertheless morphs into a brilliant trial lawyer. His cross-examinations are devastating. For example, one eye-witness claims he saw the two ‘utes’ enter the Sack o’ Suds grocery store and exit five minutes later in a green car. He knows it was five minutes because he looked up just as he started and just as he finished cooking his morning grits. Vinny points out that in the rest of the grit-eating world, it takes 20 minutes to cook grits. The witness is destroyed. Vinny also deploys his girlfriend Mona Lisa Vitto, an unemployed hairdresser, as an expert witness on auto mechanics to devastating effect. This scene effectively validates the existing system of partisan expert witnesses. [Footnotes omitted.]
The entire paper, (M. Asimow, "Popular Culture and the Adversary System"), with many more examples, can be downloaded as a PDF from Social Science Research Network. Link via Christine Corcos at the Law & Humanities Blog ("Michael Asimow on the Image of the Adversarial System in Popular Culture," Dec. 1).
Juicy Legal Fallout from Cancellation of O.J. Simpson’s Book Deal
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.