Legal News

No lifelines for Disney in 'Millionaire' verdict

By Richard Binder

Last Wednesday a federal jury awarded Celador International, Ltd. $269.4 million in damages after unanimously finding that Disney subsidiaries, ABC Television, Buena Vista Television, and Valleycrest Productions, Ltd. had breached their contract with Celador to share profits from the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Celador is the British originator of the show.

The lawsuit, filed in 2004, arose over a dispute regarding profits. Celador International had licensed the rights for "Millionaire" to ABC Television and Buena Vista Television for North America. In return, Celador was to share fifty-fifty in expected profits from the show. The Walt Disney Co. said that not only did the show never make a profit, it generated over $70 million in "losses" for them.

The case challenged the common practice of "vertical integration" ? ownership by large corporations both of the production and distribution of programming. Celador's lawyer, Roman Silberfeld, managing partner of the Los Angeles office of Minneapolis-based Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, told The National Law Journal that the case exemplifies how vertical integration can damage third parties who have a stake in a show's profits.

See more of Silberfeld's conversation with NLJ here.

Deadline.com says William Morris may be next.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 12, 2010 (boomark / email).