Ron Perelman, the Revlon chairman who is less wealthy than an entire other 86 people in the world, is trying to settle a little legal matter over Marvel Entertainment Group, a company he once helmed before it sank into bankruptcy. Not that it hurt Perelman much: He and other toppers stood accused of fleecing the company, directing its dollars to his own companies before Marvel went under. So he’s offering shareholders $80 million to settle the matter, while admitting no wrongdoing. This is, of course, a mere 4X more than he paid to have his ex-wife’s name stamped on a building at UPenn, and $473.5 million less than he stands accused of stealing.
Great news for lazy television viewers and soap opera addicts: Recording shows on your DVR is not a violation of copyright law! The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York even said so, dismissing claims from evil networks like Turner Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC, which, back in 2006 when DVRs were just an ugly acronym, considered the technology an affront on their God-given right to make you watch terrible ads for local car dealerships and LavaLife.com. The television networks now have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, instead of accepting the challenge of DVRs and producing better programming. [Photo: Chris Madden]
A federal judge did not dismiss the lawsuit against Nancy Grace that accuses the CNN talker of driving a woman to suicide, allowing the case to move forward. You remember the situation: When Melinda Duckett’s son went missing, she went on Grace’s show only to get grilled by the over-eager host about all the suspicious facts surrounding his disappearance, and then killed herself before the interview aired. CNN and Grace wanted the wrongful death suit dropped because any ruling against them would “severely chill” coverage of missing persons. Maybe. At the very least it might get the hosts of these shows to chill the hell out.
What’s with everybody and trying to protect their copyrights? On the heels of RedLasso caving to NBC and Fox’s infringement lawsuit comes word two other major cases are making their way to the courts. The first involves the MPAA, a literally a four-letter word for movie pirates, which wants the websites FOMDB.com and MovieRumor.com shut down for persistently posting information on how to download movies illegally. The second involves litigation magnet YouTube, which is being sued by Italy’s prime minister. CONTINUED »
Every time Tim Gunn uttered the words “make it work” during the first season of Project Runway, he was paid precisely this amount: $0. And during the second season? Just $2,500 per episode. That’s according to his testimony in New York State Supreme Court, where proceedings are underway between NBC Universal and The Weinstein Company, which ripped Runway away from NBC’s Bravo for Lifetime. Other tidbits from the ongoing trial? NBC chief Jeff Zucker has instructed Bravo to air marathon repeats of Runway during the same timeslot Lifetime will air new episodes of the show’s sixth season. Did we mention Zucker is BFF’s with Harvey Weinstein?
Halle Berry is suing the paparazzo who snapped pictures of her four-month-old daughter recently. The photo captions said that mother and daughter were “out and about,” but they were actually in Berry’s garden. Berry is accusing the photog of trespassing on her property in order to get the shots; in California, that’s a criminal offense.
I wonder if Lil’ Kim knows that after Simon & Schuster gave her a $40,000 advance to write an novel in 2003, they turned around in 2005 and gave Foxy Brown, of all people, $75,000 for a memoir called Broken Silence, which I’m going to take a wild guess was meant to be about her sudden hearing loss.
Former in-house attorney for General Electric, Adriana Koeck, hasn’t been accused of keeping a blog while working for the business giant. But she does stand accused of leaking sensitive — and, um, legally confidential — documents to a reporter. The New York Times‘ David Cay Johnston, who retired April 11 and now writes for Tax Notes International, is said to have benefitted from Koeck’s information generosity, publishing a story for his new employer about an alleged tax fraud scheme at a GE subsidiary in Brazil. Naturally, GE isn’t very pleased about the article’s allegations — which have been picked up in Brazil but not very much in the U.S. — or how it came to be. CONTINUED »
Two big judgments out of the United Kingdom that, in all likelihood, won’t affect us Americans one bit. But since we’ve all been on the Facebook and engaged in a Nazi orgy once or twice, they’re worth schooling you on so you don’t run into the same fate as a pair of gentlemen who had to sue to restore their good names. (Well, one of the guys who sued probably only soiled his name more.) CONTINUED »
Rather than tuck her boobies inside a bikini top, bitter actress Sienna Miller is suing Big Pictures, the photo agency responsible for exposing her bits, and News International’s News of the World and Sun, which printed the pics.
Though, Miller might be less upset about having her breasts printed in the tabloids than she is about the exposure of her her relationship with married Brothers & Sisters actor Balthazar Getty, who was forced into acknowledging a separation from his wife when the photos surfaced.
In December, Miller successfully scored a $75k judgment against those same two papers when they printed pictures of her filming a nude scene for a movie. And if she secures a similar award this time around, she’ll have the budget to support her lifestyle and continue making art house films, steering clear of any cineplex we’d ever visit.
Though it’s pretty clear that Project Runway is headed to Lifetime for the show’s sixth season, NBC Universal isn’t taking Harvey Weinstein’s bull sitting down, which explains why Jeff Zucker was in a New York court yesterday trying to convince a judge that they lost the show on Bravo because of the Hollywood mogul’s shadowy ways. The Weinstein Company wants NBC’s breach of contract suit — which claims Weinstein didn’t give NBC right of the first refusal option that was promised — dismissed, while 30 Rock wants an injunction to keep the series from going to Lifetime until the trial is over with. Us? We just want this trial to continue forever and ever! Also, photographers in the courtroom. CONTINUED »
In the months ahead, Dan Rather is going to get to throw down with former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, current CBS head Les Moonves, and maybe even CBS grand poobah Sumner Redstone. The first two are scheduled to give depositions in Rather’s wrongful termination suit against CBS, where he’s claiming the network so tarnished his reputation in the aftermath of Memogate that he was unable to get hired at NBC, ABC, or CNN. Rather, of course, has since found work in the nether regions of the cable dial on HDNet, where he receives less exposure than his court filings.
News that Bronx prosecutors subpoenaed the indie political Room 8, looking to identify some of the site’s anonymous commenters — and threatening legal action if the blog even mentioned that they’d been served with a subpoena — shouldn’t have been entirely surprising. Because where there are blogs, there are potential lawsuits.
Actually, not just potential lawsuits. Actual lawsuits. Like this one against Perez Hilton. CONTINUED »
Perez Hilton’s found himself in a bit of a legal pickle.
Former reader - and presumed fan - Diane Wargo has filed a $25 million lawsuit against the blogger. Wargo claims that Hilton violated his own privacy agreement after he posted a curse-laden email she sent from her work information.
“A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the dismissal of a libel lawsuit by former Army scientist Steven Hatfill against The New York Times Co. over a series of columns he said implicated him in the 2001 anthrax attacks. A unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the newspaper over the lawsuit that claimed that columns by Nicholas Kristof published in 2002 defamed Hatfill and caused him emotional distress.” [Reuters]
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