More News on the Tolkien vs. New Line Lawsuit

TheOneRing.Net ^ | 7/20/2008 | Altaira

[Oyarsa]

More News on the Tolkien vs. New Line Lawsuit
July 20th, 2008 by Altaira

Thanks again to Voronwe_the_Faithful for posting another update on the Tolkien vs. New Line Lawsuit on our message boards: The plaintiffs filed a First Amended Complaint last Monday (which I believe was the last day for them to do so). They have dropped the fiduciary duty cause of action (as expected), but they have asserted new allegations to support the fraud cause of action. They added more specific claims as to how they contend that New Line misrepresented the amount of expenses that it had in order to avoid paying the royalties due. And they somewhat clarified their contention as to how they relied on these misrepresentations to their detriment. Undoubtedly New Line will again file a demurrer to the fraud cause of action. I would say it is about a 50/50 chance that the judge will sustain it this time. Meanwhile, the likelihood of a settlement continues to slip away.

[Oyarsa]

For those of you who were unaware of the New Line Cinema lawsuit, this thread at the same source gives background: http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2008/02/11/28369-tolkien-estate-sues-new-line/

[Old Sarge]

BTTT for later

[Jotmo]

The address leads to a page with another link with details. That link is dead.

Could you fill us in a bit?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

This kind of thing is standard operating procedure in Hollywood. Anybody who has a share of the Net Profits never sees a penny, since the studios place all kinds of general overhead expenses against the movie’s profits before calculating Net Profit. To make money you have to get a part of the Gross Profit.

[Mamzelle]

re: They added more specific claims as to how they contend that New Line misrepresented the amount of expenses that it had in order to avoid paying the royalties due.)))

This is a common way that studios screw artists. However--both the Hobbit and the LOTR are now out of copyright to my old-fashioned way of thinking. It used to be that authors only had fifty years before a work of art went into the public domain.