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'Dora' Litigator Gets Contingency Fees, but Less of Client's Future Earnings
In 2007, the television network Nickelodeon handpicked Caitlin Sanchez, then 12-years-old, to voice the wildly popular cartoon character “Dora the Explorer.” But Sanchez's stint playing a cheery preschooler wound up introducing her into a very adult world of litigation. The partnership soured three years later and Sanchez's parents sued the network, alleging that it forced her into an exploitative labor contract. The focus of the case soon shifted, however, to a dispute between the Sanchezes and their lawyer, John Balestriere of Manhattan's Balestriere Fariello, over allegations that Balestriere forced them into a quick settlement that was nearly as exploitative as the original contract.
District Judge Thomas Griesa of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently rejected those claims, approving Balestriere's $193,000 contingency fee and future payments for his role in negotiating the $510,000 settlement in 2010. Sanchez v. MTV Networks, 10 Civ. 7854. The ruling marks the third rejection of the plaintiffs' efforts to undo the deal ' a campaign that's churned through three sets of lawyers. It also caps a two-year-old case that featured some unlikely moments ' such as Viacom's lawyers at Shearman & Sterling describing the ins-and-outs of contemporary toddler television entertainment to an 82-year-old judge.
The Sanchezes, a Cuban-American family in Englewood, NJ, hired Balestriere in 2010 to bring a lawsuit claiming that Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, cheated them out of millions. The family claimed the network gave them a 22-minute deadline to sign a convoluted contract that provided Caitlin just “a few hundred thousand dollars” for her voice-acting work and related promotional activity, according to court transcripts. Balestriere soon reached a deal with Viacom and its lawyers at Shearman & Sterling that got the Sanchezes an additional $450,000 tied to Caitlin's residual earnings, plus $60,000 for past appearance fees. The deal also gives the Sanchez family rights in perpetuity to have its own auditor review Viacom's calculations of residuals and merchandising.
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