Plus, regarding claims directed at a re-release of the film in 2000, Vivendi says it’s outside the statute of limitations. Separately, the defendant says that the plaintiffs have failed to allege fraud with requisite specificity. Shearer’s lawsuit also pins blame on Ron Halpern at Canal for mismanagement of the exploitation of Spinal Tap including allegedly abandoning trademark rights and preventing band members from performing or selling merchandise.īut in the motion to dismiss, Vivendi brings the argument that the fraud claim is derived from the same allegations that comprise the contract claim and that plaintiffs may not tortify their allegations. For example, there’s the issue of soundtrack music rights owned by Vivendi subsidiary Universal Music Group, and the allegation that “the accounting between the Vivendi subsidiaries is not at arm’s-length, is anti-competitive, and deprives the TIST creators of a fair reward for their services.” In the lawsuit, Shearer and his cohorts allege they are to get 40 percent of net receipts and that Vivendi isn’t doing an honest job managing the flow of payments through its subsidiaries. Revenue from other sources and territories has been similarly modest.” As a reality check on this lawsuit, even though Spinal Tap has garnered affection in the United States, it has generated U.S.
#THIS IS SPINAL TAP SOUNDTRACK MOVIE#
“But that is only because the movie they made has not generated anywhere near the revenue necessary to pay them anything close to that sum.
“Plaintiffs may not like the fact that they have not received anything close to the $400 million in contingent compensation that their complaint absurdly claims they should have received,” continues the motion. It’s also argued that the Spinal Tap members signed inducement letters looking to STP to collect payments, and thus, they waived the right to sue. The dismissal motion argues that they don’t have any standing to pursue contract claims, and that ownership of a contracting party does not confer third-party beneficiary status either. Spinal Tap Productions is a co-defendant in the lawsuit, but so are Shearer, Guest, McKean, Reiner and their associated companies. That is because Studiocanal has accounted and paid STP’s participation in accordance with the Agreement.” Had plaintiffs investigated their lawsuit before filing it-a duty that at least the plaintiffs’ lawyers bear under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure-they would have learned that they have no basis on which to assert any claims concerning the calculation and payment of the Spinal Tap participation. Thus, they lack the information they would need to assert that Studiocanal rendered erroneous or improper Spinal Tap participation statements, if that had happened.
“Plaintiffs never requested, much less conducted, any audit.
“Here, however, plaintiffs never even got to the starting point,” states a motion to dismiss. If results are disagreeable, a lawsuit gets filed. According to defendants, it’s customary for profit participants to request that a qualified accountant review the distributor’s records to determine whether participation statements comply with a contract.
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