Legal News

'Monster-in-Law' Suit Ends in Monster Award to Defense

By Matthew Heller, Editor

A woman who claimed the movie ?Monster-in-Law? ripped off a screenplay she wrote has learned a painful lesson about ?idea theft? lawsuits as a judge ordered her to pay $894,983 in attorney fees to the film's stars ? including Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez ? and producers.

Sheri Gilbert of Wilson, N.C., who describes herself as an aspiring screenwriter, alleged there were ?substantial similarities? between the roles Fonda and Lopez played in ?Monster-in-Law? and her script based in part on her own experience of an over-controlling mother-in-law.

Hollywood is bedeviled by copyright infringement suits over hit movies and TV shows, many of them completely meritless. In November 2009, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner of Los Angeles dismissed most of Gilbert's case, finding that any similarities between her work and ?Monster-in-Law? paled ?in comparison to vast differences in characters, plot, mood, and themes.?

Prevailing parties in copyright infringement cases can recover attorney fees. And after a further year of litigation, Klausner has brought the hammer down on Gilbert.

?Plaintiff?s lawsuit was objectively unreasonable and motivated by bad faith,? he said in his order. ?A fee award is justified in order to deter Plaintiff, and those similarly situated, from prosecuting meritless claims for copyright infringement.?

In a departure from the usual litigation scenario of corporate Goliaths burying plaintiffs under paperwork, Klausner found Gilbert had ?engaged in a concerted effort to make the present lawsuit as expensive as possible for Defendants? by, among other things, continually amending her complaint to avoid a ruling on motions to dismiss.

The award compensates four attorneys and two paralegals at the high-powered firm of White O'Connor Fink & Brenner in Los Angeles for more than 3,000 hours of work on the case. The attorneys' hourly rates ranged from $185 to $450.

Gilbert was represented by her husband, attorney Willie D. Gilbert, who filed the original complaint in North Carolina in May 2008 ? three years after the release of ?Monster-in-Law.? The suit named no fewer than 51 defendants, including Fonda, Lopez, screenwriter Anya Kochoff, and theatrical distributors New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.

?I felt like I'd seen it before,? Sheri Gilbert said of her first viewing of ?Monster-in-Law.? ?I felt I could predict what would happen in the next scene.?

The course of the litigation was also somewhat predictable. Gilbert had copyrighted three versions of a screenplay in which a woman tries to keep her son from marrying his new girlfriend, but Klausner said the ?issue of substantial similarity between Plaintiff?s works and [the film] ... is not a close one.?

?Plaintiff was only able to point to some generic similarities between the two works that were not  protected under copyright law,? he added.

The judge also agreed with the defense lawyers that they deserved an award of attorney fees because of Gilbert's ?vexatious? litigation strategy. ?Between 2008 and 2009,? he noted, ?Defendants filed two Motions to Dismiss which were rendered moot after Plaintiff filed amended complaints ... Plaintiff?s tactical decisions served to maximize the cost of the lawsuit.?

Gilbert has appealed the dismissal of her case and the fee award but her prospects of a reversal are slim and she risks having the appeals court award more fees against her if she loses.

In a similar case brought by a woman who claimed the ?Matrix? movies stole from her work, a judge in 2006 awarded $305,235 in attorney fees to the defense after more than three years of litigation.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

Full post as published by On Point News on January 21, 2011 (boomark / email).