Cussler attorney calls accusations ‘hogwash’

Veteran lawyer Bertram Fields drew sharply contrasting portraits during his closing argument Tuesday of two entertainment titans who have spent millions waging a fierce legal battle over the film “Sahara.”

Clive Cussler, 75, author of the popular Dirk Pitt adventure series, spent nearly every day of the 13-week trial in a downtown courtroom and several days taking “a pounding” on the witness stand, Fields said.

“You really got to know him,” Fields told the jury of nine women and three men. “He sat here and he took it. Yes, he has a bad memory. Yes, sometimes he struggles for words. I think you will conclude he is not an evil man.”

Philip Anschutz, 67, a Denver billionaire and budding movie mogul, made up a story in the breach-of-contract case and then failed to “take the heat of cross-examination,” Fields said. “Mr. Anschutz has never been here. He never took the stand. [Yet] it is Mr. Anschutz that wants you to enrich him at Mr. Cussler’s expense.”

Cussler and Anschutz are fighting over who is to blame for the financial failure of “Sahara,” the 2005 adventure movie that stars Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. The film has lost $105 million to date.

Cussler sued to block the film in January 2004, claiming that Anschutz’s producers reneged on a written contract that gave him “sole and absolute” approval rights over the screenplay. Anschutz countersued, alleging that Cussler was unreasonable in exercising the approvals and fraudulently exaggerated sales of his Dirk Pitt novels.

Anschutz’s lead attorney, Marvin Putnam, is scheduled to deliver his summation today in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“In Mr. Fields’ opening, he claimed Mr. Cussler is a man who means what he says and says what he means,” Putnam said. “Now, at the end of the trial, Mr. Fields had to admit that remotely wasn’t the case. He was left to beg the jury to not do any further damage to his client’s already tattered reputation.”

Fields told the jury that Cussler was seeking $40 million in damages. “He is looking to get back the valuable rights he had,” the attorney said.

Fields devoted much of his summation to instructing the jury not to get distracted by “sideshows and smokescreens.” He urged jurors to focus on e-mails, memos and contracts produced when the deal was negotiated several years ago, and to ignore statements of witnesses called by Anschutz’s lawyers.

“If you look at what they wrote at the time and not what they claim now was said, you will have a terrific guide to who is telling the truth,” Fields said.

Sporting a conservative gray suit, white shirt and reading glasses, the slim, graying Fields spoke to jurors in a soft voice for about 3 1/2 hours over two days. Working off of handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad, Fields began by reminding jurors that Cussler vowed never to sell the film rights to his Pitt novels after the adaptation of “Raise the Titanic!” in 1980.

“The picture was a turkey,” Fields said. “It was very embarrassing to Mr. Cussler.”

About a decade ago, Cussler was pursued by Howard Baldwin, the former owner of a National Hockey League franchise who ran a small production company. The author demanded “complete and absolute screenplay approval” before agreeing to a deal, Fields said.

After his financial partner died unexpectedly, Baldwin turned to Anschutz, who had earned a fortune in oil and gas, railroads and real estate.

After daylong negotiations in Denver in June 2000, Anschutz agreed to pay Cussler an extraordinary $10 million per book for two Pitt novels, along with options for additional titles. It took both sides nearly a year to hammer out a 30-page contract.

Anschutz’s production company, Crusader Entertainment, violated the terms by making “massive” changes to the “Sahara” script without Cussler’s written approval, Fields said. He noted that Crusader producers rejected a Cussler-approved screenplay by Academy Award-winning writer David S. Ward.

“Every page of the Ward screenplay was changed,” Fields said. “They gutted the story.... They doomed that picture to failure.”

Fields dismissed as “bogus” the claim that Cussler tried to force Anschutz’s producers to use his own screenplay.

“They say he would only consider his own writing. Hogwash!” Fields said. “They claim he took back his approvals. More hogwash!”

The real problem, Fields said, was that Anschutz and Baldwin had entered into a contract that gave the novelist creative control over the film. “It was Cussler’s call to make, not theirs,” he said. “Again, if they didn’t want to make that deal, they shouldn’t have made it.”

Fields scoffed at the contention that Cussler was unreasonable and acted in bad faith in executing his approvals. “There is just no evidence of this whatsoever,” he said.

Similarly, Anschutz’s claim that Cussler and his agent fraudulently inflated the number of Pitt books sold from at most 40 million to more than 100 million amounted to more “smoke,” Fields told the jury.

He accused Anschutz of inventing a “bizarre story” in a sworn deposition that Cussler used the 100 million number in a private negotiating session to justify the $20-million fee.

“There never was a private meeting,” Fields said. “This guy is just making it up and if he wasn’t, why isn’t he here to take the heat of cross-examination like everyone else?”

glenn.bunting@latimes.com

Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.