New Line fined in 'Lord of the Rings' court battle
A judge orders the studio to pay $125,000 and hire an outside document retrieval service after evidence in director Peter Jackson's accounting lawsuit isn't produced.
By John Horn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2007
Peter Jackson has scored a legal victory in his battle with New Line Cinema over the accounting of the "Lord of the Rings," with a federal magistrate hitting the studio with $125,000 in sanctions for failing to produce potential evidence.
Jackson is suing New Line, contending that he had not received a fair and proper accounting of the first "Lord of the Rings" film's income, including DVD sales and foreign receipts. All told, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy sold about $3 billion of movie tickets worldwide.
The lawsuit does not specify monetary damages, but is believed potentially to include tens of millions of dollars for Jackson. The lawsuit has driven a wedge between Jackson and New Line, and delayed development of a contemplated New Line-MGM movie based on "The Hobbit," a related novel written by "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien.
Lawyers for Jackson and New Line did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In an often angry ruling dated Sept. 18, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen J. Hillman found that New Line may have destroyed (or failed to prevent the destruction of) documents and failed to search diligently for documents and e-mails it was required by the court to produce. Hillman recounts any number of examples where the studio's searches were not meaningful or "haphazard." He was particularly critical of how New Line treated e-mails related to the film and its accounting.
"No witness can say with any degree of certainty what individuals searched their own e-mail files or how any of those searches were conducted," the magistrate wrote. Furthermore, he wrote, "New Line did not suspend the automatic deletion of e-mails and other electronic documents as part of a litigation hold; instead, to this day, e-mails continue to be purged from every employee's in-box every thirty days."
Convinced New Line has not and will not scour its electronic records appropriately, Hillman instructed the studio to retain and pay for an outside document retrieval vendor within three weeks. He also said some New Line witnesses may face further depositions to discuss new documents that should have been produced earlier but weren't.
The $125,000 in sanctions is intended to reimburse Jackson's attorneys some of their costs in pursuing the documents. In July 2006, Hillman ordered New Line to produce sales and licensing documents the studio had argued were confidential and proprietary.
A judge orders the studio to pay $125,000 and hire an outside document retrieval service after evidence in director Peter Jackson's accounting lawsuit isn't produced.
By John Horn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2007
Peter Jackson has scored a legal victory in his battle with New Line Cinema over the accounting of the "Lord of the Rings," with a federal magistrate hitting the studio with $125,000 in sanctions for failing to produce potential evidence.
Jackson is suing New Line, contending that he had not received a fair and proper accounting of the first "Lord of the Rings" film's income, including DVD sales and foreign receipts. All told, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy sold about $3 billion of movie tickets worldwide.
The lawsuit does not specify monetary damages, but is believed potentially to include tens of millions of dollars for Jackson. The lawsuit has driven a wedge between Jackson and New Line, and delayed development of a contemplated New Line-MGM movie based on "The Hobbit," a related novel written by "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien.
Lawyers for Jackson and New Line did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In an often angry ruling dated Sept. 18, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen J. Hillman found that New Line may have destroyed (or failed to prevent the destruction of) documents and failed to search diligently for documents and e-mails it was required by the court to produce. Hillman recounts any number of examples where the studio's searches were not meaningful or "haphazard." He was particularly critical of how New Line treated e-mails related to the film and its accounting.
"No witness can say with any degree of certainty what individuals searched their own e-mail files or how any of those searches were conducted," the magistrate wrote. Furthermore, he wrote, "New Line did not suspend the automatic deletion of e-mails and other electronic documents as part of a litigation hold; instead, to this day, e-mails continue to be purged from every employee's in-box every thirty days."
Convinced New Line has not and will not scour its electronic records appropriately, Hillman instructed the studio to retain and pay for an outside document retrieval vendor within three weeks. He also said some New Line witnesses may face further depositions to discuss new documents that should have been produced earlier but weren't.
The $125,000 in sanctions is intended to reimburse Jackson's attorneys some of their costs in pursuing the documents. In July 2006, Hillman ordered New Line to produce sales and licensing documents the studio had argued were confidential and proprietary.
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