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Actor's Negligence Claim over Film Set Injury Preempted by California's Workers' Compensation Act

The U.S District Court for the Central District of California decided a background actor was a “special employee” whose negligence claim alleging hearing injury against a film production company thus was preempted by the remedy provided by the California Workers' Compensation Act (WCA). Gencarelli v. Chernin Entertainment LLC, 2:17-cv-2818. James Gencarelli, a background actor in the movie The Greatest Showman, filed suit claiming his hearing was damaged due to “dangerous high decibel sounds from speakers on the set of the movie.” The WCA states in Calif. Lab. Code §3600(a) that “[l]iability for the compensation provided by [the WCA], in lieu of any other liability whatsoever … shall, without regard to negligence, exist against an employer for any injury sustained by his or her employees arising out of and in the course of the employment ….” Gencarelli worked on the film under a production services agreement (PSA) between Empire Casting Services (ECS) and defendant Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. The PSA stated that “the status of ECS and personnel provided hereunder is that of employer, employee and Fox hereby accepts such personnel as a recipient of personnel services ….” Central District Judge Otis D. Wright II noted: “A 'special employment' relationship arises when an employer lends an employee to another employer and relinquishes to the borrowing employer all right of control over the employee's activities.” District Judge Wright further noted: “[T]he payroll voucher ECS provided to Plaintiff at the end of each work day contained a provision expressly stating '[t]he production company shall have the exclusive right to exercise control over the wages, hours, and working conditions of [Plaintiff's] employment on The Production.” As a result, the district court concluded, “[T]he undisputed facts indicate that Plaintiff was a special employee of Defendant Fox, and a General Employee of ECS.”

Nashville Federal Court Decides Record Producer Didn't Abandon Master Recordings of 1970s George Jones Album

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee decided that record producer Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery didn't abandon physical master recordings he left at a studio decades ago, of an album he produced for country artist George Jones and the Smoky Mountain Boys. Montgomery v. Jones, 3:18-cv-284. Montgomery produced the album at a Hendersonville, TN, studio at the end of the 1970s. Jones died in 2013. The album was released by co-defendants Concord Music Group and the Cracker Barrel stores in 2017, as a “lost” recording after striking a deal with Jones' widow Nancy — but without Montgomery's approval or naming him as producer. Montgomery filed suit alleging conversion, trespass to chattels and false light invasion of privacy. On the first two claims, the defendants argued Montgomery had abandoned the tapes. Middle District Judge Aleta A. Trauger found: “Montgomery has alleged, however, that he was merely following industry practice, and the court is required to accept that assertion as accurate for the purposes of a motion to dismiss. Simply leaving an item in what is the equivalent of storage, even for a very long time, is not necessarily sufficient evidence to demonstrate an intent to relinquish one's ownership of the item.” District Judge Trauger further found that Montgomery's suit wasn't blocked by a laches defense because: “The rights at issue in this case … did not even begin to be violated until about five years before the suit was filed, when Nancy Jones obtained the tapes without Montgomery's consent. Admittedly, Montgomery did not, then, immediately file suit. There is no reason, however, to conclude, at least at this stage, that his delay was unreasonable.” But the district judge dismissed Montgomery's false light claim, noting as to the marketing of the album as “lost” that “no reasonable juror could conclude that the language used was highly offensive. … [In addition,] such a characterization is not even clearly false in this instance. The recordings of the Jones/Smoky Mountain Boys album were lost, in a sense, at least to Jones himself and his record labels. The two known copies remained, respectively, locked away in a Tennessee recording studio … Calling that album 'lost' is a fair use of an ambiguous term.” As to the album release's failure to cite him as album producer, the court noted: “By Montgomery's own description, [compensatory damages 'for damage to the intrinsic value of the master recordings'] were not caused by the failure to credit him on the album, but by the album's release itself. He has, therefore, failed to plead damages arising out of the alleged false light invasion of privacy.”