In a decision that may prove prophetic for Frank Darabont and CAA’s long struggle of $ 300 million The Walking Dead Profit sharing war with AMC, Cableman has just won a major battle that could be a deathblow to the legal actions of Robert Kirkman and other executive producers against them.
After a delay of several months due to the continuing coronavirus pandemic that essentially closed the courts, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge today finally ruled TWD Comic book creator Kirkman’s mini-trial to settle interpretations of contracts with AMC stemming from a potentially multi-million dollar case filed in August 2017.
With definitions and language focused on the likes of modified adjusted gross earnings and imputed license fees, Judge Daniel Buckley hit the Kirkman case as Negan hitting Lucille in TWDSeason 7 starter, if you know what I mean?
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“In accordance with the foregoing, it is ORDERED: issues one, two, three, four, five, six and seven are decided in favor of the accused; and This case proceeds to a full judgment on the merits based on the contract interpretations thus decided in this trial, “Judge Buckley said in a decision statement released Wednesday (READ HERE).
It should be noted that there were a total of seven problems available in the so-called mini trial that started on February 10.
“Today’s decision is a complete victory for AMC,” lead wire attorney Orin Snyder proclaimed to Deadline this afternoon.
“The judge found in favor of AMC the seven issues that were brought up in the trial and confirmed that AMC honored their contracts and paid Kirkman and the other plaintiffs what was owed them,” added Gibson’s attorney, Dunn & Crutcher. . “As the court found, these plaintiffs had the most sophisticated Hollywood attorneys and agents and got what they negotiated for.
“We are now turning our attention to the trial in New York, which involves very similar claims by CAA and Frank Darabont, confident that the first court to hold a trial on these matters ruled entirely in AMC’s favor,” Snyder concluded.
It was also delayed due to COVID-19, that trial with the first TWD Showrunner and his agency are now slated for April 2021 in New York, though that could change again.
Starting in 2013, Darabont and CAA initiated the Big Bucks action, the lawsuit that Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and their colleagues TWD EPs Charles Eglee and Glen Mazzara put forward three years ago on this side of the country claims that AMC used deceptive financial moves to blatantly swindle them through contested MAGR calculations and more.
In this revealing first round in which Bird Marella represented Kirkman fell short, the judge was not buying any of his POVs.
“Ultimately, the Plaintiffs’ effort to avoid the clear language of the settlements is futile,” Judge Buckley wrote in today’s decision. “Even if the Plaintiffs were correct and the MAGR calculation was never agreed, their claims would fail because they would have no contract to enforce,” he said. “But, in fact, the parties agreed: AMC’s definition of MAGR” should “control the calculation of MAGR. That solves this problem and much of this case.”
Still, as if to mark Kirkman and the other EPs with shame, the LASC judge took the time to turn one of the plaintiff’s star witnesses and a Hollywood mandarin’s own testimony against them into his decision. “The plaintiffs’ own expert, Kenneth Ziffren, admitted that” he cannot point to any income, money, “which Mr. Kirkman was deprived of as a result of these transfers of affiliated rights within the company within AMC.” Judge Buckley proclaimed.
With the mini-trial ending in early March, just before LA entered the closing, Kirkman, Alpert and Hurd took the position along with super attorney Ziffren. As the name of Ronald Reagan was strangely invoked on occasion, and past and present AMC executives reviewed the dense explanations of the contract, most proceedings saw lawyers, such as Ron Nessum of Snyder and Bird Marella, in an almost constant state of objection and procedural friction that often fueled polite judicial scolding.
Perhaps more than one caveat that came out of the mini test of just over a week ago is the fact that TWD the once highest rated show on all of television is so red that no one has received any earnings share payments since November 2018. That hits the bottom line with even more noise when you consider that as well TWD, Fear of the living dead and after the show Talking dead, all of which had its day in the legal sun during the mini trial, AMC has a The Walking Dead: beyond the worlds spinoff ready to roll too.
Only two days before almost complete TWD Top actors and creatives will appear at this year’s virtual Comic-con @ Home, Kirkman’s Bird Marella attorneys did not respond Wednesday to request comment on what is surely a stinging rebuke, but it is not the end yet.
