Suit Against Disney Takes a Literary Turn

On this holiday weekend, out of our legal picnic basket comes news about Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner’s unpublished memoirs, a prominent Republican consultant’s family values, and separate appellate court victories for a couple of familiar former co-stars.

OF MICE AND MEN: The latest development in a case that has all of Hollywood riveted recently acquired a literary bent. The Walt Disney Co. said it won’t fight a judge’s order to turn over excerpts of main mouse Michael Eisner’s unpublished memoirs to former studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is suing the company for $250 million.

“We’ll be complying with the order,” said a source on the Disney legal team, who asked not to be named. So now Katzenberg might find out what Eisner really thought of him during their years at the helm of the Magic Kingdom.

Katzenberg filed suit last year seeking bonuses he claims he is owed under a 2% profit-sharing plan for Disney projects he had shepherded. At issue is whether that plan included profits that rolled in after his departure.

Retired appellate court Judge Campbell Lucas is deciding what Disney should disclose to Katzenberg, and vice versa, as Hollywood’s most watched financial tiff heads toward a November trial date in Los Angeles Superior Court. Katzenberg’s lawyer, Bertam Fields, is now taking Eisner’s deposition.

Eisner and Katzenberg, who previously worked together at Paramount, are credited with building Disney into the largest entertainment business in the world. Katzenberg revived the company’s lucrative animation franchise, but left Disney in 1994.

The excerpts to be turned over deal solely with Eisner’s autobiographical musings about Katzenberg and his bonuses, attorneys said.

FAMILY VALUES: While denying in a libel lawsuit that he beat two former wives, thrice-married political consultant Don Sipple nonetheless managed to take a printed jab at each of them.

Sipple, the strategist who injected the character issue into the GOP’s past two presidential campaigns, defended his family values in a $12.5-million libel suit against alternative magazine Mother Jones.

“Mr. Sipple did not physically abuse either of his first two wives nor any other woman or child in his life,” says the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. It points out that neither woman made any abuse allegations during their divorce proceedings.

The piece was partially based on later court testimony by the two former wives during a 1992 custody battle won by Sipple, who lives in Santa Barbara.

“Somebody’s not telling the truth here,” said lawyer Gary Bostwick, who says his client isn’t being ungentlemanly. Instead, Sipple is trying to show why the women might be motivated to lie about him, the lawyer said.

Wife No. 1, the lawsuit states, has long suffered from “considerable problems for many years, including drug and alcohol abuse.” Wife No. 2 “formed a very close relationship with a married man” while still wed to Sipple, the suit states.

Sipple’s lawsuit pointed out 27 statements that he asserts are false. They appear in an article in the September-October issue of Mother Jones.

Editor Jeffrey Klein said, “We stand by the story. There has been independent confirmation of the story by his two former spouses. We believe the story is true. That’s why we ran it.”

Sipple claims in his suit that the article has already cost him one political consulting job with a New York congressional candidate. Other prominent clients seem to be standing by their man, he said in the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that the story was part of a plot “to reduce or extinguish altogether [his] influence in the Republican Party and to shut him out of campaigns of major significance.”

YO, ADRIAN: What’s the deal with the ad that ran last week in the Hollywood Reporter? It said: “WANTED. Information concerning lawsuits involving Sylvester Stallone or Frank Stallone.” It gave a number and said the responses would be confidential. Since the brothers Stallone were the stars of an item here a couple of weeks back, we called the number in the ad to inquire. Apparently our response was so confidential nobody ever called back.

ENQUIRING MINDS: “Enquiring judges want to know.”

So began a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion upholding a Los Angeles jury’s award of $150,000 to Clint Eastwood, who sued the National Enquirer for publishing an interview he says never happened.

It was a rare victory for a celeb in the war against the tabloids. The court also ruled that the tabloid must pick up Eastwood’s $650,000 in legal fees--in effect, rewarding Mr. Make My Day for what the court noted was his “litigiousness.”

The court based its ruling on the Enquirer’s hyping of a freelancer’s interview in December 1993 as an “exclusive,” when it should have been more suspicious about whether the interview actually occurred. The story was headlined, “Exclusive Interview: Dirty Harry lifts the lid on his private life,” the court’s opinion said.

“The editors falsely suggested to the ordinary reader of their publication--as well as those who merely glance at the headlines while waiting at the supermarket checkout counter--that Eastwood had willingly chatted with someone from the Enquirer,” wrote Judge Alex Kozinski in the 3-0 ruling.

Because Eastwood had been involved previously in a suit against the Enquirer, the court reasoned, the tabloid should have looked askance at a freelancer’s “peddling of an interview with a litigious mega-star”--especially after the writer claimed he had erased the interview tapes.

Eastwood’s drinking habits should have raised another red flag, said his lawyer, Raymond C. Fisher. Eastwood was quoted in the faked story as saying he is a scotch drinker. It is common knowledge that Eastwood prefers beer.

The article was pretty much a puff piece. But Eastwood prevailed, the court said, because the bogus exclusive suggested that the actor would sit down for an interview with a tabloid.

Such a suggestion made him appear a hypocrite or worse--”an essentially washed-up movie star . . . courting publicity in a sensationalist tabloid,” the court said.

“It’s an effort to whack them for being a tabloid,” said Enquirer lawyer Gerson Zweifach, adding that the Enquirer is mulling appeal options.

UNFORGIVEN: Sondra Locke, Eastwood’s former co-star in life, love and the movies, can sue Warner Bros. for fraud and breach of contract after all, a state appellate court ruled. Locke’s case, dismissed in Superior Court two years ago, was reinstated in a unanimous decision that lawyer Peggy Garrity called a significant victory over the studios for actors and other artists.

The appeal court reversed a lower court opinion that stated, in essence, that the courts had no business interfering with a studio’s subjective decisions regarding what work to accept or reject. The appeals court found that Locke had a case because the studio had rejected her pitches outright, without considering her work on its merit.

Locke alleged that the studio set her up in a sham movie development deal to appease Eastwood and settle her palimony case against him. But Eastwood’s agenda, she alleged, was to kill her career after the couple’s acrimonious 1989 breakup by ensuring that none of her projects went into production.

“We conclude triable issues are present with respect to whether Warner breached its development deal with Locke by categorically refusing to work with her,” wrote Justice Joan Demsey Klein for the 2nd District of the state Court of Appeal. The justices also found that Locke could go to court with her allegations that the studio fraudulently entered into the deal while having no intention of working with her.

The issues are the same as in Locke’s civil fraud case against Eastwood, tried before a jury last year in Burbank. Locke won a fistful of dollars from her laconic former love, who settled for an undisclosed amount just as the jury seemed ready to find in Locke’s favor.

Both cases stemmed from the couple’s breakup, Locke’s palimony case against Eastwood, and a $1.5-million development deal, which was part of the palimony settlement.

As the court’s opinion noted, “Unbeknownst to Locke at the time, Eastwood had agreed to reimburse Warner Bros. for the cost of her [development] contract if she did not succeed in getting projects produced and developed.” The court observed that early in the second year of Locke’s contract, Warner charged $975,000 to Eastwood’s film “Unforgiven.”

“The bottom line is, this decision says the industry is not above the law,” said Garrity.

Lawyers for Warner Brothers could not be reached for comment.

REBUTTALS: An item in last week’s court files about writer Aaron “A Few Good Men” Sorkin’s dispute with actor/producer Warren Beatty goofed on the name of a film project. Sorkin is seeking $475,000 he claims he is owed for polishing the script of a film called “Ocean of Storms,” his lawyer, Arthur Ginsburg, said.