LAWSUITS NEWS & LEGAL INFORMATION
Lord of the Rings Accounting, New Line Cinema pays Peter Jackson $125,000 in royalties
Los Angeles, CA: (Sep-24-07) Peter Jackson brought a lawsuit against New Line Cinema, alleging that the studio still owes him for the work that he did on The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) motion picture. In his suit, Jackson claimed that the studio used creative accounting to cheat him out of millions in royalties from the first chapter in his big-screen trilogy, 2001's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The LOTR trilogy generated upwards of $3 billion in global ticket sales. Jackson and his production house, Winghut Films, sued New Line in March 2005, accusing the company of cooking the books when it came to accounting for DVD sales.
In a settlement reached, a federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the studio to pay a $125,000 penalty for failing to turn over documents related to the case. In his ruling, US Magistrate Steven Hillman said New Line not only failed to comply with his previous court orders to produce the paperwork and emails, but he suggests that New Line "haphazardly" searched for the requested documents and may have destroyed potential evidence. In addition to the fine, which was partly levied to cover costs rung up by the director's legal team, the judge also instructed New Line to hire an outside document-retrieval expert within the next three weeks to make sure further electronic records are saved. [E! ONLINE: LOTR ROYALTIES]
Published on Sep-26-07
In a settlement reached, a federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the studio to pay a $125,000 penalty for failing to turn over documents related to the case. In his ruling, US Magistrate Steven Hillman said New Line not only failed to comply with his previous court orders to produce the paperwork and emails, but he suggests that New Line "haphazardly" searched for the requested documents and may have destroyed potential evidence. In addition to the fine, which was partly levied to cover costs rung up by the director's legal team, the judge also instructed New Line to hire an outside document-retrieval expert within the next three weeks to make sure further electronic records are saved. [E! ONLINE: LOTR ROYALTIES]
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