Court Yanks Hanks’ Case Against Builder
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have been ordered to quit complaining.
An Idaho court has barred the couple from continuing to seek arbitration against the contractor that built their Sun Valley abode, ruling Thursday that a 2004 settlement that went in the contractor’s favor should have been the last word on the issue.
Storey Construction Inc. was awarded $1.85 million through arbitration in 2004 after Hanks and Wilson cited multiple problems with the residence built for them in 2002.
The actors and Sun Valley Trust, which technically owns the deed to the home, went after the contractor again in November, maintaining that there were “design deficiencies, errors and omissions” in their house and guest cottages and seeking $2.5 million in compensation and damages.
Storey countersued for abuse of process in December, contending that Hanks and Wilson’s recent legal action was “motivated by revenge” that they didn’t win their case way back when.
But Blaine County 5th District Court Judge Robert J. Elgee ruled last week that the matter was settled in 2004and that’s that.
“What that means is there isn’t going to be any trial, there isn’t going to be any claim against Storey, it’s over,” Miles Stanislaw, an attorney for Storey, told the Idaho Mountain Express. “The judge essentially ruled that they had their chance in the prior arbitration. So unlike the movies where you get to do it over again, in Blaine County you don’t get a do over if you don’t like the results the first time around.”
But Hanks didn’t get to where he is by taking no for an answer.
“Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson intend to appeal the judge’s decision,” the actor’s rep, Leslie Dart, said in a statement Monday. “This is not a petty dispute where Tom and Rita are trying to squeeze money out of a small, local contractor. There are serious design and construction problems that should never have happened, but did, and now need to be fixed.”
In March, Elgee also denied motions from Hanks’ camp to keep their court files sealed and to dismiss Storey’s countersuit.
Lohan Divorce a Done Deal
That's one down.
The Lohans were able to cross one of their long pending legal obligations off the family docket Friday as Lindsay's parents, Dina and Michael, finally reached a settlement in their acrimonious divorce.
"Mr. and Mrs. Lohan, you have both demonstrated to me extraordinarily good judgment in resolving the matter as you did," Judge Robert Ross of the Nassau County Matrimonial Center told the ex-couple.
The split is expected to be made official within 90 days, depending on how soon the formal documents are filed and processed by the courthouse. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
"Now, the healing process can begin for myself and my children," Dina told reporters outside the courthouse. She also said that Lindsay, recently photographed walking and biking near the grounds of the Cirque Lodge rehab center in Park City, Utah, was doing "fantastic."
As is the family's troubled patriarch.
"I thank God it's finished," Michael said after the hearing. "I wish Dina the best, and I hope we can both move forward and put our best foot forward for the kids' sake and just be good parents."
The settlement comes a week after the Lohans' last court appearance, at which time they promised the judge that a deal would be hashed out by today. At the time, both sides said some "minor details" were all that remained but did not reveal the nature of the hangups during the closed-door court session.
While all that stands between Dina and Michael's singleton status is a court stamp or two, the potentially tricky issue of custody still needs to be worked out.
Under New York law, divorce and custody issue are handled by different juridictions. While the former couple have concluded their business in the state supreme court, they still have to appear in family court next month to determine visitation and custody of their two minor children, 13-year-old Aliana and 11-year-old Dakota.
In previous hearings, the judge in that case, Stacy Bennett, ordered Michael to get a job and start forking over $500 a week in child support. (Lindsay, 21, and her brother Michael, 19, are no longer minors and are not part of the custody discussions.) The children were not mentioned in the Matrimonial Center hearing Friday.
Last week, Ross reportedly granted Michael visitation privileges for his two youngest children, provided a pastor and no less than two lawyers are on hand to supervise. Michael has been living at the Christian-based drug and rehabilitation center Teen Challenge since getting sprung from prison in March and , his lawyer told People, has not seen any of his children in more than three years. (Michael and Dina were close to a settlement in 2005, before his legal troubles, including repeated DUIs and assault charges, landed him behind bars.)
It's unclear if Bennett will make changes to this arrangement next month, but she should have a report from the family therapist the judge assigned to evaluate the elder Lohan.
Dina and Michael are due back in family court for a hearing on the matter Sept. 6, by which time Michael is expected to have had his first visit with his minor offspring.
Lindsay, meanwhile, is due to appear in courtrooms in both Santa Monica and Beverly Hills for her dual DUI cases Aug. 24.
Judge to Potter Players: Let’s Settle
The best way to reach a resolution in the case of the unauthorized Harry Potter guide? Make it disappear.
So says a Manhattan federal judge who is urging author J.K. Rowling and an American publisher to settle their copyright-infringement dispute over a book titled The Harry Potter Lexicon, whose publication Rowling is trying to block.
U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr. cautioned that since the contentious case falls within a gray area of copyright law and fair-use allowances, it could spend years in litigation as it winds its way through appeals courts.
Rowling, 42, and coplaintiff Warner Bros. Entertainment filed suit in October against Steven Vander Ark, owner of the popular Harry Potter Lexicon fansite, and Michigan-based RDR Books, which intends on selling the book version for $24.95 a pop.
The famed author testified on Monday that the 400-page Lexicon, based on Vander Ark's site, not only amounted to "wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work," but also "decimated" her creative work by forcing her to take a break from writing her latest novel so she can focus on the legal battle.
She also asserted that the suit wasn't about money but about protecting authors' rights by halting the release of "sloppy" companion guides.
To that end, her legal team enlisted Suzanne Murphy, a vice president at Scholastic, which publishes the Potter novels in the U.S. She testified that Lexicon could potentially attract many buyers despite what she called a "poor" compilation.
Lawyers for RDR pushed back by putting its own publishing expert, Bruce Harris, on the stand Wednesday. Harris argued the publication of Vander Ark's Lexicon would in no way weaken sales of Rowling's glossary should she end up writing one given her unique stature as a world-class author and the rabid demand for her work by fans.
Vander Ark, a 50-year-old former librarian, launched his site in 1999 to celebrate the Potter books and engage fellow fans. On Tuesday, he tearfully testified how his book was meant strictly to be a celebration of Rowling's "genius" and that he initially had his own doubts about whether such a compendium might violate copyright, until he was convinced otherwise by RDR.
The basis for the publisher's defense is the so-called fair-use doctrine, which defense attorney Anthony Falzone claimed gave Vander Ark and RDR the scholarly right to "organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter."
Zeynel Karcioglu, a New York-based attorney specializing in trademark and copyright law who attended Wednesday's hearing, said he believed Patterson urged a settlement because the judge felt the case was being "lawyer driven." That is, one side, most notably the defense, was using it to set a precedent expanding the concept of fair use.
RDR's defense is partially being paid for by the Stanford Fair Use Project, a project of Stanford Law School whose mission is provide pro bono legal support to cases that test the boundaries of fair use for the purposes of enhancing creative freedom.
"While it's clear the Project's mission is a noble one, and one that I applaud, practitioners sometimes fear test cases that are not based on very strong facts," Karcioglu said. "This case may be an example of such a situation in that creating a lexicon might be fair use, but creating this particular lexicon is not."
Rowling and her attorneys claim that Vander Ark's site simply recycles her copyrighted material by listing characters, magical creatures, potions, spells and other Potter-related tidbits. At the same time, they argue, Lexicon failed to conjure up any original commentary or incorporate fan-based discussions that Rowling believed made Lexicon her favorite fansite on the Internet.
"A fan's affectionate enthusiasm should not obscure acts of plagiarism. The publishers knew what they were doing," Warner Bros. said in a statement Wednesday.
"The problem remains that Lexicon takes an enormous amount of Ms. Rowling's work and adds virtually no original commentary of its own. As we've said in court, it takes too much and adds too little. Authors have a duty to prevent the exploitation of their works by people who contribute nothing original, creative or interpretive."
The judge will likely base his decision on the amount and nature of the copying Vander Ark and RDR. That, adds Karcioglu, could lead him to issue a sweeping opinion that bars the fair use of a lexicon.
"The question is does J.K. Rowling have rights to any and all lexicons using and talking about Harry Potter?" said the legal eagle. "If this one is stopped, this could be used as a stick to stop other noninfringing works."
The defense is expected to rest its case by the end of the week. Rowling is expected to be called back to the stand by her lawyer to refute the testimony laid out by RDR and Vander Ark.
Rowling Conjures Up Court Appearance
J.K. Rowling's hoping a little legal hocus-pocus will make an unauthorized Harry Potter book disappear.
The megaselling author took center stage in a Manhattan federal court Monday and testified that the planned reference guide, The Harry Potter Lexicon, "constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."
Rowling, 42, and Warner Bros. Entertainment filed suit last October against Steven Vander Ark, owner of the Harry Potter Lexicon website and Michigan-based RDR Books. The complaint accused the defendants of copyright infringement and claimed the publication of an encyclopedia without permission violated Rowling's intellectual property rights and undermined her ability to issue her own definitive guide to the fantasy world she created.
"Words she slaved over…now appear in a book under the name of somebody else," Rowling's attorney, Dale Cendali, told judge Robert P. Patterson in opening remarks.
For her part, Rowling said the battle over Lexicon has "decimated my creative work over the last month" to the point where she's been forced to set aside her latest novel.
"I really don't want to cry," she said, when quizzed about how she felt about the publication of the guide.
Cendali said RDR's enterprise was a thinly veiled attempt to cash in on the phenomenally successful Potter books, which have sold more than 400 million copies and spawned five feature films that have grossed more than $4.5 billion.
Defense attorney Anthony Falzone, however, cited fair-use doctrine, which he believed gave RDR and the website's editor more than enough leeway "to organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter."
That sentiment was echoed by cocounsel David Saul Hammer, who told the judge on Friday that while the publisher does not plan to contest Rowling's infringement claims that a sizeable chunk of her work was used without authorization, RDR's book shed scholarly light on the subject of Potter and was therefore protected.
Vander Ark, 50, has argued that he is within his right to put out the reference guide, retailing for $24.95 a pop, because it's culled from supplemental material generated by his Harry Potter Lexicon website, which Rowling has acknowledged being a fan of.
However, Rowling has likened the move to a plot by You-Know-Who.
She claims the site merely recycles copyrighted material she developed on her own, including listing characters, magical creatures, potions, spells and other Potter tidbits. At the same time, she argues, Vander Ark's tome leaves out original commentary and fan-based debates that she believed made the site so unique and helped enhance the experience.
Publishing such a companion guide for profit could seriously harm the revenue stream of professional writers and ultimately do a disservice to devotees of their work, she asserts.
"If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet," Rowling says in court documents. "Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities."
As it stands, Rowling is not asking for damages or seeking to shut down the website, but just aims to block the guide's release.
The nonjury trial is expected to continue through the week.
It'll be up to the judge to determine whether RDR's book is a legitimate fair-use claim or constitutes what Rowling's camp says is a ripoff for monetary gain.