Should We Add a New Category to Our Sidebar?
Once again, we consider (but resist) the need to add a new category to our sidebar, "celebrities and attorney's fees."
As reported in a November 5, 2009 update on the Daily News Wire Services, Academy Award-winning actor John Voight as well as Hank and Dorothy Paul, the parents of Mr. Voight’s manager Steven Paul, were ordered by Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Grimes to pay $100,000 in fees incurred by attorneys in a malicious prosecution suit that Mr. Voight and the Pauls dismissed in late August 2009.
Two producers sued Voight, the Pauls, and others in federal court in February 2006, claiming fraud and breach of contract for millions of dollars over failed film projects that were inspired based on allegations that Mr. Voight touted the Paul family as being people of integrity. The producers were awarded a $630,000 judgment in federal court, but the judgment was not against Mr. Voight and the Pauls. In turn, these exonerated defendants filed a malicious prosecution suit in Santa Monica Superior Court against the two producers and their attorneys, claiming they had no reasonable grounds for suing Mr. Voight and the Pauls. On August 10, 2009, Judge Grimes dismissed the malicious prosecution suit against one attorney representing the two producers. Later in August 2009, Mr. Voight and the Pauls filed papers dropping their case against other attorneys representing the two producers.
However, some set of the attorneys representing the two producers moved to recover attorney’s fees from Mr. Voight and the Pauls. (We presume they were as prevailing anti-SLAPP defendants or because they were prevailing parties after the dismissal.) Anyway, Judge Grimes did order that Mr. Voight and the Pauls, jointly and severally (apparently), must reimburse about $100,000 in fees claimed to have been incurred by the former attorneys that were dismissed in the malicious prosecution suit.
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