The Work
December 16, 2008 6:30 PM
In Oscar Case, a Victory for Quinn...and Tough Loss for Dreier
Posted by Zach Lowe
A good month for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges just got better, and a bad month for firms associated with Marc Dreier just got a little worse.
Fresh off their win in the Mattel-Bratz bloodbath, Quinn Emanuel scored a win for one of its regular clients, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which had filed suit to prevent the heirs of silent film star Mary Pickford from auctioning off her Oscar awards (and one belonging to her ex-husband, Buddy Rogers).
The heirs, represented by Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George, a West Coast affiliate of Dreier LLP, announced plans to auction the Oscars to raise money for Rogers' charity. The Academy filed suit, arguing it had first dibs on buying the Oscars for $10 apiece. (Experts had speculated that the Oscars, especially Pickford's Best Actress trophy for the 1929 film Coquette, could bring in between $500,000 and $1.5 million).
The case, argued in front of a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury, hinged on whether Pickford was bound by a 1951 rule codifying the Academy's $10 right of first refusal. The rule wasn't around when Pickford won her first Oscar, but the Academy argued that she signed papers saying she agreed to the rule when she won an honorary Oscar in 1976.
Pickford's heirs argued that the star never signed those papers, and they summoned noted handwriting expert Lloyd Cunningham to testify in support of that argument--the same Lloyd Cunningham whom Quinn Emanuel called to testify in the Mattel-Bratz case. In that matter, Cunningham testified that Mattel alum Carter Bryant likely forged a document supposedly proving he'd invented the Bratz line after leaving Mattel.
The Quinn team, led by David Quinto and Christopher Tayback, told jurors that if Pickford didn't sign the papers, it's likely her secretary and longtime confidante did.
"Either way, it looked a helluva lot like (Pickford's) signature," Quinto says.
In any case, Quinto says, Pickford was bound by the Academy's 1951 rule. (Trivia for movie buffs: The Academy adopted that rule after Sid Grauman, former owner of Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, auctioned off his Oscar in 1949; the Academy bought it back at auction. The sidewalk outside that theater is the location where so many Hollywood stars have placed their hands and feet in wet cement. Interestingly, this New York Times story says the Academy allowed Harold Russell, the World War II veteran who won an Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives, to auction off his Oscar.)
Dreier Stein partner Mark Passin disagreed, but the jury took less than an hour to come back with an 11-1 vote in favor of the Academy.
But Passin says the case isn't done. On Monday, a judge will hear arguments on several legal questions outside the jury's purview, including whether the $10 rule is enforceable because it imposes property rights restrictions across generations--something Passin argues is limited to real estate.
The two sides disagree over whether the case could have ended much earlier with a $200,000 donation from the Academy to Buddy Rogers's charity. Quinto says the Academy offered the donation in exchange for the Oscar early on, but that Passin rejected it only to try and revive the talks shortly before trial. The Academy said Passin was too late, according to Quinto.
Passin says that account is inaccurate. He agrees that the Academy made the initial offer but says they took it off the table "shortly thereafter," and he claims the Academy's initial offer emerged only after both sides had done considerable work preparing for trial.
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