Latest in Courts

The Writer's Guild East has come out on behalf of documentary director Joe Berlinger, who last week was ordered by a Federal Judge to give Chevron more than 600 hours of footage he compiled for the documentary Crude: The Real Price of Oil. Berlinger and his attorneys have prevailed upon Judge Kaplan to stay the order…

Most of the time, Hollywood is complaining about Joel Silver. Now the producer is complaining about Wall Street. Matthew Belloni scooped about the breach of contract and fraud lawsuit filed today in LA Superior Court by Silver against Goldman Sachs. It claims the investment bank stiffed him on more than $30…

BREAKING NEWS! The studio just filed a 14D-9 a few minutes ago announcing that “settlement discussions” with Carl Icahn have begun. A sources tells me that the corporate raider/shareholder activist came to Lionsgate “and wanted to talk. LG has a fiduciary responsibility to listen.  He is their second largest…

BREAKING NEWS! 2ND UPDATE 12:40 PM: The subject of today’s Warner Bros/DC Comics lawsuit, Los Angeles copyright attorney Marc Toberoff, just gave me his response. (See below) Original Post Filed 10:26 AM. Updated Writethru 11:30 AM: Today there’s been a shocking development in the Superman copyright litigation. Warner…

UPDATE: Drama, drama, drama! (And fast drama.) First, the British Columbia Court of Appeals today granted Lionsgate’s request to reexamine the British Columbia Securities Commission's decision to stop the studio from using a poison pill defense against Carl Icahn’s attempted hostile takeover. And then, with lightning…

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge recalled the bench warrant he issued on David Bergstein after the embattled film financier showed up in a courtroom to address his unpaid casino markers worth nearly $1 million. Judge Matthew St. George issued the bench warrant after Bergstein sent his lawyer to handle the mess but…

Film director Roman Polanski today broke his silence first the time about his Swiss arrest and pending extradition back to Los Angeles. He released this statement to the news media through his Paris friend and author Bernard-Henri Lévy, director of the French magazine La Règle du Jeu: Throughout my seven months since…

That’s basically the long and short of it. Lionsgate today announced that it has filed an application with the British Columbia Court of Appeal for leave to appeal the British Columbia Securities Commission's decision to stop the studio from using a poison pill defense against Carl Icahn’s attempted takeover of the…

Most people know Las Vegas casinos are relentless when it comes to making people pay up. Everyone, it seems, but David Bergstein. Not only has he stiffed filmmakers around the world, but the moron stiffed Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino for $950,000 in gambling markers. After the casino won a legal judgment against him…

UPDATES Crisis Flack Mike Sitrick Sued By Employees Here’s a statement from John A. Kober of Morgan Lewis & Bockius, which is the legal counsel for Sitrick And Company on ESOP matters. (FYI, I broke this story yesterday. And the lawsuit I saw has a U.S. District Court time-stamp on it, so his allegation that it was…

UPDATE: Sitrick’s Lawyer: ‘No Basis’ To ESOP Suit It looks like crisis PR guru Mike Sitrick is going to need…

This falls under the category of a giant, HUH? David Molner’s Screen Capital International is one of the lead creditors and primary catalysts for that bankruptcy court action against David Bergstein. But I was surprised to learn from Molner that Miramax subsidiary Bachi Corp actually sued Bergstein’s ThinkFilm to…