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Versus Disney, Animation Legal Beagle, Spring 2004

© Nicholas Moreau

Slesinger vs Pooh
For thirteen years, the owners of Winnie the Pooh's merchandising rights have had a lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company. Finally, after these years, the case has been dismissed by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles McCoy, because the rights owners went garbage picking.

A family company, Stephen Slesinger Inc. was sold the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh in 1930, by its author A. A. Milne. The company felt it wasn't being paid a fair amount from Disney in royalties, launching a 1991 lawsuit. The company not only wanted more money from the deal, it wanted to end the licensing agreement. If Slesinger had won the case, Disney says that the royalties and damages might have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars. Disney filed a motion for sanctions early last year. Both sides' attorneys submitted briefs on their positions, by request of McCoy, before he made his final ruling on the case.

After Disney "continued to unreasonably block discovery," Slesinger hired a private investigator to go dumper diving. Judge McCoy ruled that Slesinger's "willingness to tamper with, even corrupt, the litigation process constitutes a substantial threat to the integrity of the judicial process." Slesinger lawyer Patrick Cathcart complained that the judge didn't address the underlying merits of the case. All of the mountains of documents Slesinger retrieved were in publicly accessible dumpsters.

What I want to know is, can the world's third largest media corporation not afford a few paper shredders? Even my local public library has a large, corporate volume shedder in its head branch. Even my grandparents have one.

Disney vs Disney
Roy Disney, former Disney executive and a nephew of the late-Walt Disney, is suing the Walt Disney Company on failure to release information on how many employees participated in last month's protest vote against the reelection of chief exec Michael Eisner. According to a Los Angeles Times report, Roy has asked the court to make the Disney Corp to show documents, records, proxies and ballots from the annual meeting in Philadelphia.

This lawsuit comes on accusations that as many as 70% of the 28 million shares were withheld from the vote, and if all votes were counted, the dissatisfaction with CEO Eisner would be shown.

A Disney spokeswoman claims that the company is wanting to comply, but must first make sure that it abides by confidentiality requirements dictated by federal law.

The suit was filed in the Delaware Chancery Court.

One major benefit if Eisner's booted out of the House of Mouse... Pixar's interested in returning. Steve Jobs says that he's going to stop shopping around for another distributor for Pixar's features, until the dust clears