MICHAEL MOORE REACHES SETTLEMENT WITH WEINSTEINS

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has agreed to a settlement offer from The Weinstein Co. a month before his multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the company over alleged accounting irregularities was to go to trial, the Hollywood Reporter reported today (Thursday), citing recently filed court documents. Moore had hired an outside accounting firm to conduct an audit of [...]

GLOBES TRIAL ENDS

Testimony ended on Tuesday in the contentious court battle between the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Dick Clark Productions, the longtime producer of the HFPA’s Golden Globes Awards on NBC. In its lawsuit against DCP, the HFPA contends that the production company did not have its approval to negotiate a new contract with NBC and [...]

NEWS CORP SETS ASIDE $155 MILLION FOR HACKING SETTLEMENTS

News International, the unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp that oversees his British news operations, has reportedly added £80 million ($124 million) to the kitty it had set up to settle invasion-of-privacy lawsuits arising from telephone hacking conducted by reporters and private investigators working for the now-defunct tabloid News of the World. The legal fund [...]

WARNER BROS. SETTLES TATTOO ARTIST’S LAWSUIT

Warner Bros. said on Monday that it had “amicably resolved” — i.e., settled — tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill’s lawsuit for using the tattoo he had created for Mike Tyson on Ed Helms’s face in The Hangover II. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The studio had recently announced that it had decided to [...]

ACTRESS WANTS MORE THAN MONEY FROM NEWS CORP

In a widely predicted legal maneuver, lawyers for Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid News of the World have sought to quash an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought against it by actress Sienna Miller. Appearing in a London court on Thursday the lawyers argued that the newspaper has already admitted liability for hacking into her voicemail, has apologized, and [...]

23,000 BITTORRENT USERS WILL BE BITTEN

More than 23,000 BitTorrent users who downloaded a copy of the Sylvester Stallone movie The Expendables are likely to receive letters from the U.S. Copyright Group, notifying them that they will be sued for copyright infringement. The USCG letter will also propose a settlement of around $2,000, published reports said today (Wednesday). According to Wired [...]

MURDOCH NEWS GROUP ADMITS PHONE HACKING

In an extraordinary about-face, Rupert Murdoch’s News International — the umbrella group for his British news operations — has admitted that reporters for its Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, hacked into the voicemails of at least eight celebrities and politicians who are suing the paper. The admission reverses its previous stance that the [...]

HACKERGATE: WHO KNEW WHAT, WHEN?

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp appeared to be exposed to the possibility of millions of dollars in lawsuits Wednesday as a judge in London ordered that police turn over to the former assistant of publicist Max Clifford any evidence that they may have that her voice mail was tapped by reporters or investigators working for Murdoch’s [...]