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Counsel Concerns
A federal district court in Manhattan sanctioned a lawyer and his client for pursuing in bad faith claims against the company that holds the rights to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan. Estate of Hogarth v. Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. (ERB), 00 CIV. 9569 (DLC).
The estate of Burne Hogarth, a renowned illustrator of Tarzan stories, sued for a share of about $15 million in licensing fees paid to ERB by the Walt Disney Co., which produced a 1999 animated feature based on the Tarzan stories. The estate was represented throughout by David Smallman, now a litigation partner at Piper Rudnick, and a changing cast of co-counsel.
In a sharply worded decision, the Southern District of New York said that the plaintiffs and their lawyers could not present any good-faith claim that the Disney movie's depictions of Tarzan were similar to those of Hogarth. “Apparently well aware of the limitations to their claims, the plaintiff's litigation strategy was designed to coerce a settlement from [ERB] and to avoid a trial if at all possible,” the district court wrote. “Because of these tactics, the litigation was unnecessarily contentious and expensive and required extensive judicial supervision.”
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