U.S. Supreme Ct. Asked to Consider Laches Issue in <i>Raging Bull</i> Case

At the same time, a new organization of lawyers ' the California Society of Entertainment Lawyers (CSEL) ' representing artists, writers and other creators, is urging the High Court to use her case to repudiate the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, noting that a judge on that federal appeals court has called it “the most hostile to copyright owners of all the circuits.” Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., 695 F.3d 946 (9th Cir. 2012). The organization's founder said that no plaintiff has won a literary copyright infringement case against film studios or networks in the Ninth Circuit in two decades.

The legal question in the Petrella petition for writ of certiorari presents a bread-and-butter concern for artists who spend years trying to assert their rights to their works and to the companies defending against their claims. Key to the case is the doctrine of laches, which bars a plaintiff from recovery if he or she waited too long to sue without a good reason. The idea is that it's unreasonable to expect a party to defend against a stale lawsuit. Petrella's lawyer, Stephanos Bibas of the University of Pennsylvania Law School's Supreme Court Clinic, argues the laches defense is not available in copyright infringement claims. MGM's counsel, Mark Perry of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher insists that is so especially when a plaintiff, like Petrella, waited 18 years to assert her rights.