José Feliciano, the singer and guitarist best known for "Feliz Navidad," has filed a scandalous lawsuit against Roy Sciacca, his former manager.
Feliciano has been in the record business for five decades and besides his virtuoso guitar playing, he's also become an icon for being a successful blind musician. But in a complaint filed in a Florida county court on June 14, he alleges that Sciacca took advantage of his visual impairment and holds nothing back.
"Roy Sciacca describes himself as a 'God' and 'mogul' in the music business with 'top' industry credentials," says the lawsuit. "However history indicates that he is actually a repeatedly failed entertainment entrepreneur, judgment debtor, and a fraud as set forth herein, to the extent that perhaps only a blind man could have missed the signs."
The U.S. government's lawsuit against Apple for engineering an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of e-books has entered its final week with the computer giant being given an opportunity to defend its deals with publishers.
The case focuses on a time when Amazon was dominating the e-book market but selling their products at a wholesale price of $9.99 to the chagrin of the publishers. Apple then allegedly acted as a "hub" to switch the industry to an "agency model" whereby the price of e-books was raised, with Apple taking a commission of sales.
Time Warner Cable is being accused of requiring subscribers to pay higher cable bills to watch Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers games without offering them the opportunity to opt out of those channels.
A class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court -- which names TWC as well as the Lakers and Dodgers as defendants -- charged TWC with "abuse of its position as the primary provider of cable television" in Southern California.
A recent lawsuit over aggressive IP policing on the Twilight brand hasn't tamed Summit Entertainment.
The Lionsgate division has filed a new lawsuit over perfumes that allegedly infringe trademarks relating to its blockbuster franchise. Among the fragrances in dispute are Moonlight Women's Eau De Parfum and Moonlight Ever After Eau De Parfum.
On the cusp of premiering on Showtime, the documentary Venus and Serena has drawn a lawsuit from the United States Tennis Association.
On Friday, the USTA filed a complaint in New York federal court that alleges that filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major used unauthorized footage in their film about the rise of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams. The lawsuit has already been discussed by news outlets like The New York Times, reporting about the copyright allegations, but the other claims could make this dispute worth close attention.
If this was a straight-forward copyright claim about unlicensed footage, a judge would be looking at the "four factors" for determining fair use -- the purpose and character of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount taken and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the copyrighted work.
But there's a few wrinkles in this dispute that transform a typical fair use controversy into a deeper discussion for documentarians and news organizations about access and control.
Julianna Margulies has scored a success in her legal battle with her former manager over commissions, and as a result, will look to win the case on Thursday.
Last year, the The Good Wife star was sued by D/F Management for at least $420,000. The management firm of Steve Dontanville claimed that it was entitled to 10 percent of what she continued to make on shows and for product deals that were negotiated while they were her representatives.
Margulies returned fire with a counterclaim that Dontanville failed to provide her with any writing to memorialize the terms of his firm's engagement. It was a defense based on the statute of frauds which requires that certain contracts be signed and in writing.
In response, D/F Management made a demurrer that challenged this.
On Tuesday, a Los Angeles Superior Court held a hearing and overruled the demurrer. As a result, the parties go to a second round later this week whereby Margulies' attorneys will be seeking summary judgment.
Eunice Huthart, who says she worked as a stunt double for Angelina Jolie, has filed a lawsuit against News Corp. for intercepting her voice-mail messages.
The complaint was filed in California last week and is believed to be the first claim brought by a victim in the U.S. over the ongoing hacking scandal that has been haunting Rupert Murdoch's company.
Michael Rosner, the former general counsel and executive vice president of Relativity Media, is joining Sklar Kirsh in the law firm's corporate department.
Beyonce has wiggled out of a lawsuit brought by a video game company that sued the musician for allegedly backing away from a deal to create a motion-sensing dance game.
The suddenly hot legal issue of internships has spread to the music industry.
On Monday, June 17, a former Atlantic Records intern named Justin Henry brought a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and others similarly situated against the Warner Music Group. The complaint filed in New York Supreme Court seeks to recover claimed unpaid minimum wages and overtime wages for a class that's believed to be greater than 100 individuals.
The lawsuit comes less than a week since a federal judge in New York ruled that two interns who worked on Fox Searchlight's Black Swan were classified improperly as unpaid interns and were really "employees" covered by federal labor laws. That New York judge also certified a class action against the Fox Entertainment Group. Since the ruling, there's been a proposed class action filed against Conde Nast publications, and now this new lawsuit -- what the plaintiffs are touting as the first to be filed against the music industry business.
William Morris Endeavor has traveled to court to get commissions on Ghost Adventures, the haunted-house reality program currently in its seventh season on the Travel Channel.
According to a lawsuit that was removed to a California federal court last week, WME was the agent for MY Tupelo Entertainment -- the show's production company -- and that before the show premiered in 2008, an executive at Travel Channel agreed to WME's "standard package commission."
The agency says that it got paid its initial fee during the show's first season but has been owed money ever since.
The Travel Channel was acquired by Scripps Networks in 2012 for $103 million. WME now alleges that Scripps has breached a contractual obligation to pay the commission.
In the ongoing legal battle over Aereo, the upstart digital TV distributor won't be able to ask CBS CEO Leslie Moonves questions under oath about how Aereo's presence in the marketplace has affected the network's negotiations with cable and satellite companies.
A recent decision by a magistrate judge to deny Aereo's request to depose the CBS chief executive comes in the midst of a bruising fight in the discovery portion of the litigation. In recent months, most of the attention has been paid to what's been happening at the appellate level -- particularly, Aereo's April victory and the broadcasters' request for a rehearing -- but what's happening at the trial court is important as well.
Aereo and the broadcasters are gearing up for trial over whether Aereo's system of capturing over-the-air TV signals and transmitting them to subscribers' digital devices is copyright infringement. Both sides have brought summary judgment motions with the aim of scoring a pretrial knockout victory, but if U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan determines there's questions that are best left to a jury for answers, expect a trial to happen in the very early months of next year.
On Wednesday, magistrate judge Henry Pitman gave some further clarity on the timetable by ordering that witness depositions must be completed by mid-November, that dispositive motions have to be filed by mid-December and that Judge Nathan's pretrial order would be filed on Jan. 14, 2014.
