Judge Fines New Line $125,000 for Failing to Provide Audits
Seeming to undermine contentions by movie studios that their accounting practices are transparent and that profit participants in their films are free to examine their records, a federal judge has fined New Line Cinema $125,000 for failing to provide sufficient documentation about its revenue for "The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring." Director Peter Jackson has sued the Time Warner-owned company, demanding details of the studio's audits for the film. However U.S. Magistrate Steven Hillman ruled that New Line had provided only a fraction of the documents requested by Jackson's attorneys in the discovery phase of the trial.
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Appeals Court Affirms Rejection of Pooh Case
A California appeals court on Tuesday upheld a trial judge's 2004 decision to toss out a lawsuit filed by the heirs of Stephen Slesinger, owners of the Winnie the Pooh rights, against the Walt Disney Co. because they had improperly searched Disney dumpsters looking for evidence and had thereby obtained thousands of pages of Disney documents, many of them marked privileged and confidential. Daniel Petrocelli, the attorney representing Disney in the lawsuit, had called the conduct of the Slesingers "an assault on the legal system." The heirs claim that Disney failed to pay royalties owed under a 1983 contract covering Pooh merchandise. A spokesman for the family said Tuesday that they would appeal the ruling to the California Supreme Court.
