• Sometimes, Superman can’t catch a break. Above, in the cover to Superman Supacomic #162, he is found guilty of “crimes against humanity” by the Guardians of the Universe. We think there may be a few appellate issues here, though. First, why are a group of aliens judging Superman’s treatment of humans? For that matter, Superman is an alien himself, but the Guardians of the Universe, whether judges, members of a jury, or both, don’t appear to be his peers. But the most peculiar component of this judicial procedure is that one of the judges feels comfortable completing the sentence of the other. Yikes.
• An aside: This past week, one of the contributors of Abnormal Use got in some hot water for mentioning in front of a friend’s toddlers that Superman was, in fact, an “illegal alien.” This revelation, though certainly true, is apparently not for young ears. Don’t try and guess which one of us did committed that social faux pas. Please.
• Alan H. Crede over at the Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog speculates that “Someday A Legal Blog Will Win A Pulitzer.” Yeah, maybe, but we here at Abnormal Use are seeking something a bit more respectable than that: an EGOT.
• Friend of the blog Jeff Richardson, author of the great iPhone J.D. blog, summarizes this week’s iPhone and iPad related news here, including his thoughts on the recent revelation that one’s iPhone may be tracking more personal location information than previously thought. He does not seemed too alarmed about the news, nor do we.
• Don’t forget: You can follow Abnormal Use on Twitter at @gwblawfirm.

Depicted above is the cover of the Perry Mason Mystery Magazine #1, published way, way back in 1964. Perry Mason is, of course, the archetypal lawyer, but we’re not quite certain what he is doing with the firearm in his possession. The text on the cover tells us that the gun is one of only two clues Perry has to solve a case, but it seems like what he is doing is evidence tampering. Spoliation, anyone? And what did he do with the glass eye?

Steve Bradford at the Business Law Prof Blog has an interesting post on the ethical issues surrounding attorneys seeking colleagues’ advice on Internet listservs and email lists. Apparently, the Oregon State Bar recently addressed the issue. The only point the Oregon State Bar apparently neglected to address is why anyone is still using listservs in 2011.

We send our congratulations to Robert Wilcox, who was selected this week as the new dean of the University of South Carolina School of Law. Wilcox had previously served as the associate dean for academic affairs at the school.

Friend of the blog Jeff Richardson offers these thoughts about the 2011 ABA Techshow at his site, iPhone J.D. As huge followers of the latest technological trends, we sure wish we could have been there. Unfortunately, we could not make it this year. Alas.

Findlaw’s Decided blog has the latest on the ultimate fate of the appeal of the Winklevoss twins in their continuing legal dispute with Facebook. (Yes, yes, we saw The Social Network and dug it and its many deposition scenes, despite the inaccuracy of them.). Oh, and does any duo sound more like a pair of comic book villains that the Winklevoss twins?

• “In another few seconds, I’ll know ‘The Verdict,'” exclaims the apparent defendant featured on the hard boiled cover of Tales of Justice #60, published way back in June of 1956. The series, which billed itself as a compilation of “real rugged tales of justice in action,” does not appear to be the type of lighter superhero fare we typically feature on Friday Links. But there’s a tinge of optimism to the series, it seems, as the cover proclaims that it features “True tales proving that justice always wins!” That’s encouraging.
• There’s a lawsuit over the Dr. Who villain Davros! (Hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog).
• You might recall that in February we mentioned that our own Jim Dedman was doing some music blogging on the side for an Atlanta-based music website. He’s written a review of the new album by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, which hits stores soon. Check it out.
• Last week, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy mentioned our recent April Fool’s Day post. As you may recall, we wrote about a fictitious court that held that the Star Wars prequels were unreasonably dangerous and defective as a matter of law. Wise jurisprudence, that. That said, we loved reading the comments to Eugene’s post.
• Remember Cracked magazine? Not unlike Mad magazine, the juvenile humor themed Cracked, once a staple of newsstands in long ago days, has made a name for itself in the Internet age by creating lists of famous this or thats in popular culture. Well, this week, Christina H. at Cracked published a column entitled “6 Famous ‘Frivolous Lawsuit Stories That Are Total B.S.,” which includes the Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case. All we can say is that Christina obviously didn’t read our FAQ on the case. However, we must confess a bit of jealousy that our friends at Overlawyered are cited in the piece.
• Friend of the blog Ryan Steans of The Signal Watch blog recently visited London for the first time and marveled at the sense of history. Comparing England’s approach to history to America’s, he had this to say over at his blog:
  

  It strikes me that we in the vast, vast majority of the geography of the US do[es] not have memorials to those who died more than 200 years ago, and the further west one travels in the US, the briefer our sense of history as much more than an abstraction of something left behind somewhere else. A lack of living history, of being surrounded by those who’ve gone before (some winning, many not winning) may be what gives us an inflated sense of destiny, like a teenager who sees only a future as a rock star ahead of them when they pick up their first guitar and who can’t be bothered to learn more than the chords of their current favorite songs.

  And as hard fought as democracy has been here in the US, it was also the first step we took as a nation. Everything prior to the French-Indian Wars is buried in a sort of primordial soup of witch-hunts and Indian killing that we’d rather not discuss. In England, this period is just short of current events. You can see the change from one-thousand years of feudal clashes to the rise of democracy in the stones and monuments, and there’s something to that, I think. We’re a blip on the continuum, it seems to say, and what we do while we’re here is important, but it will also pass, and those who are remembered are remembered as either good or terrible souls, and history will look back on you with an audio tour that will speak frankly about your deeds as people walk on your grave.

  Very interesting.

Today, Abnormal Use once again continues its series, “Abnormal Interviews,” in which this site will conduct brief interviews with law professors, practitioners, and makers of legal themed popular culture. For the latest installment, we turn to Brian Dale Allen Strouse, a vocalist and guitarist of the Philadelphia based band, The Lawsuits. We’re fascinated with that band’s decision to name itself after the chief component of litigation. Strouse was kind enough to submit to a brief interview with Abnormal Use about his band’s music and name.

1) How did you decide to call yourselves The Lawsuits?

We decided on the name The Lawsuits because originally we were called The Mondays. . . . [T]here was a band called The Mondays from New York (or New Jersey), and they had [an] interest in playing our favorite bar where we got our start (John and Peter’s, New Hope, PA). We called to confirm a date for a show we had booked, and the girl called me Rick or James or Robert or Zimmy, and I said, “Excuse me?” Turns out, the bar booked The Mondays by accident, when they were intending to book THE MONDAYS. We thought it’d be clever to change our name to The Lawsuits, as we were in a situation where legal matters possibly could have been taken. Plus, two of my brothers are lawyers, and it wasn’t already a band name.

2) What has been the reaction to that choice of name?

The reaction has been mixed. The name personally has grown on me and the other members, but believe me, we’ve had our fair share of people claiming we can do better, or the name “turns them off.” I like that, though. If I can bring out an emotion of dislike, then at least I’m getting something in return from the audience. They don’t like the band name, but they like the band? Even better. Anything to position yourself strategically, placing yourself (in this case, the band) in a situation where, from the moment we walk into the venue, we’re at a disadvantage. It’s the Rudy factor, the underdog story. It’s true art. We’re trying to infect the audience, not so much live, but more so with the recorded music. And once someone is infected, (Leo Tolstoy would agree) they can’t not get “it.” It’s real, it’s honest, it’s wholly human. Some songs take two years to finish, some take two minutes, but the bottom line is this: Regardless of the name itself, once someone really gives the music a shot, and if they’re capable of liking the music (can’t deny preferences and tastes), they will see that there is something bright and strangely refreshing going on in Philadelphia.

3) How would you describe your music?

We tend to describe our music as folk-rock-blues.

4) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing musicians in 2011?

The biggest challenge that musicians face in the year 2011 is the fact the market flooded, and there are only a handful of boats floating around. There are so many musicians, and so many outlets musicians can use to promote their music. Glenn Morrow, the owner of Bar/None Records in Weehawken New Jersey did an interview . . . [in which] he said something like this, “The modern day label’s job is to weed through all the bands out there and find that gem.” Seems to be that labels now-a-days are much more cautious with their time, energy, and money. I suppose they must be. It is a business. Labels aren’t everything, though, when we dissect the idea of “what it takes to make it” or “What’s standing in my way between me and my goal?” or “What’s my biggest challenge?”, the answer is “What is it?” or “What’s your goal, really?” or “Biggest challenge, in what sense?” Ideally, I’d have tons of money, time, energy, contacts, oh, and talent, and then I’d simply combine all of that together in a large saucepan over medium heat and just sit back. However, the reality of it is this: The average musician has a finite amount of money, time, energy, contacts, and talent. They must rely on the “unexplainable” [and] “unteachable” things like luck and a workhorse attitude. In short, the biggest challenge facing musicians in 2011 is the face they see in the mirror. Even though the market is flooded and labels aren’t biting, almost anything is possible with belief.

5) As musicians, what do you think of the process of working with lawyers in the music industry?

As a self-proclaimed musician, I don’t think much about the process of working with an entertainment lawyer because I have yet to do so. I believe they are an important piece of the puzzle. They are, like the a-typical musician, “thinkers”- modern day philosophers in a sense. Also, everything now-a-days comes with a contract, and lawyers are expected to excel at deciphering the fine print. They are expected to protect the best interests of their client and advise their clients on which path to take.

BONUS QUESTION: What is your favorite song about the law or legal themes?

The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought The Law” is a good one. The Clash did a great version of it, as well. The Dead Kennedy’s also did a version. I believe their’s goes, “I fought the law, and I won.”

Here’s a few videos of the band we found on YouTube (including one tune called “Appeal #46” and a cover of The Beatles’ “Oh, Darling”:

BIOGRAPHY: The Pennsylvania band The Lawsuits formed in 2008 as a four piece rock band, morphed into a ten piece band in 2009, and fine tuned the sound back to a four piece the same year. At present, the Lawsuits are:

Brian Dale Allen Strouse – Vocals, Guitar
Josh Friedman – Drums
Brendan Cunningham – Bass, Vocals
Vanessa Winters – Vocals

• Above, you’ll find the cover of Four Color #13, published way, way back in 1942. We here at Abnormal Use are not criminal lawyers, so we can’t say how often prosecutors disarm thugs on city rooftops. We do remember something from law school about prosecutorial discretion, though, so perhaps cavalier rooftop melees fall into that category. We’d have to look at our notes. Nevertheless, we are big fans of the exploits of Mr. District Attorney.
• Yes, yes, our Star Wars post this morning was, in fact, an April Fool’s Day joke. It was a bit more transparent than our April 1 offering from last year, which you can revisit here.
• Yet again, we’ve recalled some legal rock songs we neglected to include on the list we published two weeks ago. How could we forget Wilco’s “Passenger Side,” in which the singer notes, “I’ve got a court date coming this June / I’ll be driving soon”? Or Grace Potter and the Nocturnals’ “Paris (Ooh La La),” in which the singer exclaims, “If I was a judge, I’d break the law”? Or even Son Volt’s “Down to the Wire,” which features the line, “No jury will have a final say / Everyone knows the jury is guilty.” Oh, well, we’re sure others will come to us in the future, as well. Let us know if you recall any we haven’t mentioned.

Although though we were perplexed to see a federal court address the issue, we can’t say we disagree with today’s opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of South Carolina, which found that the three Star Wars prequels were “unreasonably dangerous and defective” as a matter of law. See Kurtz v. George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd., and Indus. Light & Magic, No. 2011-1138-THX (W.D.S.C. April 1, 2011). After hearing cross motions for summary judgment, the court denied the Lucas Defendants’ motion for summary judgment and granted the Plaintiff’s motion finding no genuine issue of material fact as to the films’ defects.

The facts were these: In 2007, Plaintiff Danny Kurtz found himself at his local video store in Seneca, South Carolina browsing through the racks of new DVDs. His young seven year old son, Milo, pleaded with his father to buy him some action movies. Dutifully acquiescing to the request, Plaintiff bought him the prequels: 1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and 2005’s Revenge of Sith. At the time of the purchase, neither the Plaintiff nor his son had seen the films. (“Somehow, I made it through the last decade without seeing those movies,” the Plaintiff testified at his deposition, although he later acknowledged his familiarity with the films’ generally poor reviews.). Although the purchase was “against his better judgment,” he relented only because of the joy he felt his child might experience in being introduced to the Star Wars universe, a delight the Plaintiff recalled from his own youth in the early 1980s. After a marathon weekend viewing of all three prequels, the Plaintiff and his son experienced nausea, confusion, light-headnesses, shortness of breath, tinnitus, and a “foreboding sense of ennui.”

Plaintiff brought suit individually and on behalf of his minor son against George Lucas and several corporations, asserting various tort theories, including negligence and strict products liability. Plaintiff also asserted a novel “tortious interference with childhood memory” cause of action on his own behalf, arguing that the release of the prequels had destroyed his ability to reminisce his own younger days and his youthful enjoyment of popular culture. (The alienation of affection claims of Plaintiff’s spouse, Carrie, were settled for an undisclosed sum.).

In their joint answer, the Lucas Defendants asserted the affirmative defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, unclean hands, and equitable estoppel, essentially arguing that Plaintiff knew or should have known of the films’ lack of artistic merit and was thus barred from asserting any tort claims based upon his viewing of same. See In re: The Last Airbender, 523 F. Supp. 2d. 147 (N.D. Ga. 2010); In re: Ishtar Litig., 111 F.2d 102 (9th Cir. 1988).

In denying the defense motion for summary judgment, the court rejected the Defendants’ reliance on In re: Bob Dylan Live Performance Litig., 867 F.3d 539 (S.D.N.Y 2006), in which that court held that a once talented artist can devolve and become so well known in the community as a disappointment that damages are not recoverable as a matter of law. See also Shyamalan v. United States, 543 F.3d 129 (6th Cir. 2008). In distinguishing Dylan, the South Carolina court observed that while Bob Dylan’s decline had been gradual over a period of years, the decay of the Star Wars franchise was sudden and immediate (and preceded by nearly two decades of engendered good will prior to the prequels’ release in 1999).

The court then granted the Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, noting in a single paragraph order that the films were “unreasonably dangerous and defective as a matter of law.”

The case is also notable for a few other procedural rulings made by the court:

• The court quashed the Defendants’ deposition subpoena to actress Natalie Portman, who the court decided had “already suffered enough.”
• Finding the issue nonjusticiable and incapable of resolution by the judiciary, the court denied Plaintiff’s request to issue a declaration that Han Solo had, in fact, shot first.
• Earlier in the case, the court had dismissed Plaintiff’s state law Unfair Trade Practices Act claim which was premised upon the casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in the second and third prequels. In so doing, the court noted that the Unfair Trade Practices Act claim was merely an attempt to assert an improper negligent casting cause of action, a claim which the South Carolina Supreme Court had only last year abrogated in the Watchmen litigation. See Moore v. Snyder, 572 S.E.2d 492, 652 S.C. 19 (2009).
• The court denied the Defendants’ request to consolidate the case with a similar North Carolina matter arising from a Charlotte family’s viewing of 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

• The comic book cover above, that of Green Lantern # 80, published way back in 1970, depicts a newspaper cover alerting the world to the death sentence of Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and an unidentified third conspirator. According to one of the sub-headlines, the judge says the trial was “fair and impartial.” Well, at least there’s that. If you read the excerpt of the article at the bottom of the cover, you’ll see that the charge at issue was “crimes against humanity” and that Green Lantern “protested the evidence and moved for a retrial,” which was denied. It appears the court in question was the Intergalactic Court, Genocide Division. Think they appealed? Let’s hope so.
• One of our readers writes in to remind us of the late Elizabeth Taylor’s connection to legal history on film. In 1951, following a successful career as a child actress, she appeared in A Place in the Sun, based on the novel “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser, itself inspired by the criminal case of People v. Gillette, 191 NY 107 (1908). In the film, Taylor played the chief love interest of the defendant, based on Chester Gillette (played by Montgomery Clift), who killed his other love interest (played by Shelley Winters). The prosecutor was played by Raymond Burr, who went on to become far more famous as television lawyer Perry Mason. One notable footnote: In the movie, the death was accidental; in real life, Gillette was executed for the murder.
• David Post of The Volokh Conspiracy has a pretty interesting blog piece about a federal judge’s rejection this week of the Google Books settlement agreement.
• If you haven’t heard, legendary bluesman Pinetop Perkins died this week at 97 years old. He was still recording and touring well into his 1990s. Back in the day, he was a member of Muddy Waters’ band. We here at Abnormal Use were fortunate enough to see him in concert just a few years ago in nearby Asheville, North Carolina. It was a good show.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes excerpts from a ten page deposition in an open records dispute over the definition of the term “photocopying machine.” It’s got to be read to believe, so we’d advise that you head over there for a chuckle or two.

  Our favorite parts:

  Marburger: Let me be clear. The term “photocopying machine” is so ambiguous that you can’t picture in your mind what a photocopying machine is in an office setting?

  Patterson: I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.

  …

  Cavanagh: Dave, the word “photocopying” is at issue in this case, and you’re asking him whether something is or isn’t a photocopy machine, which is a legal conclusion —

  Marburger: This isn’t a patent case. There’s no statute that defines — where I’m asking him to define technology for me. I’m asking — I want to find out from a layperson’s perspective, not an engineer’s perspective, not a technician’s perspective, but from — I have an idea.

  …

  Patterson: If you’re referring to a type of machine where you place a piece of paper on the top and press a button and out comes copies of it, they usually refer to it as a Xerox.

  Marburger: Have you ever heard it referred to as photocopying?

  Patterson: Not with my generation, no.

  (Hat tip: Overlawyered).

Wonder Woman is arrested by a police officer in the comic book cover above, that of Super Friends # 40, published back in early 1981. We think we know how this story will end, as we previously wrote about a Wonder Woman encounter with the judicial process when she was forcibly removed from a courtroom for disruptive outbursts. In this altercation, Wonder Woman exclaims that she has “done nothing wrong,” although Superman’s response is puzzling. He remarks “We know Wonder Woman is innocent – but we can’t prove it!” Does the Man of Steel not know of the presumption of innocence?

Speaking of which, friend of the blog and law professor Mark Osler (who we once interviewed here for our Abnormal Interviews series) recently claimed on his own blog that Batman went to Yale Law School. We’re not so sure about that, but okay.

How can you not read this post by John A. Day, of the Day on Torts blog, which begins with the following sentence: “A plaintiff in a slip and fall case in New York was permitted to testify as an expert on pigeon droppings.” There’s a Daubert joke in that tale, but we can’t quite get there.

We’re crestfallen that we neglected to include Husker Du’s “Sorry Somehow” in the list of rock songs about lawyers and the law we posted this past Monday. That 1980s college rock classic includes the immortal line, “Send me a subpoena, baby, tell me what to do.”

In light of our love of the character, we direct you to a post at the Legal Profession Blog entitled “Calling Jackie Chiles.” The post is not about “Seinfeld,” but rather the dismissal of a personal injury suit arising from an accident at a Starbuck’s.

Twenty years ago today, on March 15, 1991, the film Class Action was released to theatres. Directed by Michael Apted, written by Carolyn Shelby, Christopher Ames, and Samantha Shad, and produced by Robert W. Cort, Ted Field, Scott Kroopf (as well as Shelby and Ames), the film chronicles a products liability suit involving an allegedly defective station wagon, which when struck from the rear when the left turn signal is operating, bursts into flames. Essentially, the lawsuit is a fictional version of the famous Ford Pinto litigation. However, the real conflict in the film was familial in nature: Big Law corporate defense attorney Maggie Ward (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who represents the automotive company in the suit, is the estranged daughter of Jedediah Tucker Ward (Gene Hackman), the flamboyant plaintiffs’ attorney who brought the suit. Watching the film twenty years later, it’s notable that it made a real attempt to accurately depict the legal process. There are scenes featuring a motion to compel hearing, a discovery document dump, a contentious Plaintiff’s deposition, and ethical dilemmas aplenty for both sides of the bar. Interestingly, the film uses each legal sequence to further and elaborate upon the strained relationship between the father and daughter.

We here at Abnormal Use were fortunate enough to obtain an interview with producer Robert W. Cort and writer-producers Carolyn Shelby and Christopher Ames.

Excerpts of that interview follow below:

[ON REALISTIC DEPICTIONS OF THE LEGAL PROCESS]

SHELBY: It was really a tribute to, well first of all, Michael Apted, the director, [who] came from the documentary world. And he was very committed to doing as honest a depiction of the legal process as you can in a movie. There just has to be some, artistic license to be taken, but he got technical advice, and I was very happy when the movie came out. For years thereafter, various and sundry legal journals would do ratings of movies, and Class Action would always be rated very highly, and the overwhelming reaction was that it did as good a job as was possible to depict the legal process. I was very proud of that because we did work very hard, and we had the luck of a documentarian as our director and the luck of time and the luxury of time to do as good a job as humanly possible when you have to make a story have a true line and you’ve got to focus on characters.

[LOOKING BACK 20 YEARS AT THE FILM]

DEDMAN: Looking back twenty years, what are your thoughts on the film and how it was received as a courtroom or legal drama?

CORT: . . . [O]ne could never get this movie made today . . . Movies in which the ambiguities, the ambivalences, the grays of the world, in which character rules over plot, are almost impossible to get made. The business has changed so much, and I often say that one of the really fortunate things in my career is that I had my career at a time when I could do movies like Class Action, and I have such fond memories and [am] so proud of it. . . . Its really core idea is a relationship between a father and a daughter. It takes the kind of classic, Father of the Bride relationship between a father and a daughter and puts it into, a much darker, much more interesting context and plays out family dynamics as it affects the story.

. . . [W]e began to realize that the father/daughter dynamic was just really a fascinating thing, and then the surrogate son in the part played by Laurence Fishburne became a really interesting character [in conjunction with] the divided loyalties of the daughter. I look back and I’m struck by the ambition of the movie . . . .

SHELBY: . . . When we wrote Class Action with Robert, we went through five years of working [and] did 25 drafts. And that allowed us to go quite a while going in different directions and exploring different ways to do it. You can’t do that now. People make their decisions after one draft or so as to whether or not it’s going to get made.

. . .

CORT: [W]e were incredibly fortunate to be able to develop this in a way outside of the studio. We did develop it completely outside of the studio framework, and we sold it to Fox ,but we were not forced to go through a process. . . . Even in the eighties, even in the nineties, they kind of took the flesh off of anything. So, and I think if you want to look at that, most, many, many, many really wonderful movies were sort of developed outside the studio system.

[CASTING THE FILM; THE NEAR CASTING OF JULIA ROBERTS]

DEDMAN: How did Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio become involved with the project?

CORT: . . . Gene was always kind of in our mind. We wanted a very powerful character who played against the Henry Fonda of that character . . . We wanted someone who had been toughened and was tough because that’s who those people are; they’re not saints. They’re rough people even if their passions will have been shaded over into obsessiveness. And if you look at a lot of Hackman’s roles, going back to Popeye [Doyle] and The Conversation, you see a character in pursuit of what he believes is right [who] will go to any length and ignore everything else, including, in this particular case, his daughter.

. . . I had seen Mystic Pizza, and there was an enormous amount of heat about this young actress and it was, of course, Julia Roberts. We had given it to a few other major actresses and we’d been passed on . . . The character had a lot of gravitas and huge intelligence and a fair piece of alienation even though she was working very much within the system. . . . Michael Apted and I and Scott and Chris and Carolyn met with Julia, kind of saw what she was like, and she desperately wanted to do the movie. And we really believed in her. I was friendly with the people at Disney and knew that they had not released Pretty Woman yet, but that they were through the roof on the movie. They thought that she was going to be the biggest movie star around and she desperately wanted to do it, we wanted her, Joe Roth, who was the head of Fox, just didn’t believe in her, and he just kept fighting us and fighting us and he said “Well, all right maybe.” And we thought, “Oh my God, we’re going to get her.” And then he called me one day, and he said, “Forget Julia Roberts.” He said, “I have just seen the biggest movie star of her generation.” And he had just come from a screening of James Cameron’s The Abyss, in which Mary Elizabeth starred. Mary Elizabeth had been in, at that time, The Color of Money, in which she was great. She’s a terrific actress, absolutely a terrific actress. We couldn’t see the movie because Cameron wouldn’t show us. We never got to see it. Joe was sure it was going to be titanic. Obviously, it turned out not to be titanic. He said, “You’ve got to go to her, and if she doesn’t do it, all right you can use Julia Roberts.” So, we made the offer, she was represented by a man named Sam Cohn, who is a legendary agent in New York, and he gave it to her, and she delayed, and she hadn’t read it. I kept calling, and I said, “Sam, we need an answer ,”and he said, “Yeah, I’ll get you an answer.” I called Roth, and I said, “Look, we’re just getting jerked around, let us go with Julia.” He said, “All right, I’m calling Sam. If she doesn’t commit to it by noon on Friday, noon L.A. time, 3:00 in the afternoon in New York, go with Julia Roberts.” I absolutely kid you not, at 11:55, the phone rang in my office in L.A. and it was Sam Cohn saying “All right, Mary Elizabeth will do the movie.” So, by five minutes, we missed the part being played by Julia Roberts. And I think that it wasn’t just, in my opinion, the fact that Julia Roberts became this enormous star, and we would have been following Pretty Woman, [adding] incalculable value to that. But I think that Mary Elizabeth is a very dramatic actress, and she always went for the very dramatic and the very hard. And Julia, by nature of who she was and what she brought to it, always had that vulnerable, softer quality. And I think it would have been, opposite Hackman . . . it would have taken the movie, perhaps from a commercial standpoint, to another dimension. And the great story was that she got so mad that she went to see Joe Roth and said, “You didn’t believe in me,” and she and Joe Roth became unbelievably good friends. Basically, I didn’t talk to her again until she did Runaway Bride for us.

[DEPICTING THE CHALLENGES OF WOMEN LAWYERS]

DEDMAN: The Maggie character is an interesting one because she is both a young lawyer who wants to make partner, but also a woman in a profession that is dominated by men ,particularly at that time. How do you think the film addresses those issues, and do you think that’s changed in the last twenty years?

AMES: We talked a lot about this in the development of the script. . . . [W]e hung a lantern on that very issue with one particular piece of dialogue between her and her lover, who was also her boss, where she said “I want to make partner on my own, it’s different for a woman in a firm.” I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore. I hope it’s not the case. But certainly in those days, particularly because she was sexually involved with her boss, there was a tremendous stain that she was trying very, very hard to stay away from.

[DEPICTING THE LAW AND FAMILY STRIFE]

DEDMAN: You mentioned the film does portray not just the actions of lawyers in the courtroom but also how some of what happens in the courtroom bleeds into the family life. How many of Jed’s issues with respect to how he relates to Maggie are the result of him being a lawyer as opposed to him just being who he is as a person?

AMES: Well, I don’t think you can necessarily divorce one from the other. It strikes me with Jed that his was a gigantic ego and that informed everything he did, both in his own family and in court. Jed was the kind of character who believed that he could get away with anything just because of the sheer strength of his character. One of the things that we talked to Robert about from the very first day we started developing this script was that we were going to make him a “people’s lawyer” and her a “corporate lawyer.” We had to give each of them significantly large other dimensions to their lives which is why we made him morally compromised and why we made her somebody who second guessed her own decisions.

CORT: Look at Martin Luther King and his sexual peccadilloes. People of that ego, whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it for the right reasons or they tend to believe they are. There is so much testosterone in those people, so much drive, that they need sort of eat everything in their path. I think he was a hugely compelling character in that movie. I never knew anyone who ever said anything other than he felt real.

AMES: He was patterned on some real people. There was a little of Alan Dershowitz in him. There was a little of Tony Serra in him, too. As a matter of fact, the office that you see Jed in – his “office” was Tony Serra’s office – complete with the ashes of a former drug dealer/client [which] was sitting on the desk.

SHELBY: That was put to death by order of the court. And there was artwork all over from prisoners in prison who were using their served out time to paint art.

AMES: So we did have real models out there. Bill Kunstler was a model for him, also. He probably came closer to Kunstler than anybody else.

[REACTIONS OF LAWYERS TO THE FILM]

DEDMAN: What kind of reactions have you gotten from lawyers over the years about the legal elements of the film?

SHELBY: . . . [W]e used to go to theaters that were showing it, and we would come in, all the theaters got to know us, we would come in the last ten minutes of the movie . . . follow the people out and listen to the comments. And we always gravitated toward the lawyers who would be in great debate as they left about [whether the conduct depicted was] ethical. “Could they do this ?” and it went back and forth, and it was hysterical to listen to. But this was wonderful, because there was such huge debate, and these lawyers were having the time of their lives trying to analyze the movie and mainly coming out very positively.

AMES: Perhaps the highest compliments I ever got about the movie was my daughter called me breathless one day from George Washington University . . . to inform me that the plot of this movie was being taught in one of her classes that day and she about fell out of the chair.

[LEGAL ETHICS AND THE FILM]

DEDMAN: . . . [T]here is sort of a debate about some of the ethical decisions made by the lawyers in the film. What Maggie does at the end is probably something she feels is right but may be something that would get her in trouble with the disciplinary authorities.

AMES: I’ve heard arguments for twenty years on both sides of the issues. There are two issues that people always raise about it. Number one is that and number two is whether a father and daughter really could go up against each other in court, and we were scrupulous in our desire to make this an accurate movie.

SHELBY: We also found it was fun during the process of researching and writing it, particularly towards latter stages. At every stage, we wrote a draft that went to the studio, got a response from the legal department who would tell us do this, do that, this isn’t [accurate], and so we would adapt appropriately. So all the way through the process we were getting notes from attorneys, and ironically, we finally hired . . . a technical adviser two weeks before we were going into production. And he was not an entertainment attorney, he was a products liability attorney, and he said, “Well, [I] really loved the script, but it’s not a class action.” How could this be! We came to realize that “Oh, wow, these lawyers are very specialized in their knowledge level, and all these attorneys that we’ve been talking to have not been in the field that was appropriate.” So we then talked to three different class action attorneys who read it and promptly gave us some notes to truly make it accurately a class action. . . . [B]ut the technical advisor, who was a products liability attorney, kept saying, “No, they’re wrong, it’s not a class action.”

AMES: And I must say in the years since the release, no one has ever suggested it wasn’t a class action.

[DEPICTING THE PLAINTIFF’S DEPOSITION]

DEDMAN: There is a scene where Maggie is deposing the plaintiff who is played by Robert David Hall, and in it, she seems troubled that she has to ask him about past accidents and some pre-existing psychological issues that he has related to automobiles. Why is she troubled about that approach?

SHELBY: That that scene was rewritten to death. Every single day for five years, we rewrote that scene.

AMES: A fair amount of that deposition came to us from David Hall who was a friend of mine prior to the filming and when I got David scenes to do the part and David talked about the two-day deposition that he had had where the attorneys for, I think it was Volkswagen in that case, had grilled him over and over asking him the same questions over and over just slightly rephrased and how agonizing it had been for him. I thought always with Maggie was that there was a bit of her wanting to have her cake and eat it, too. That she wanted to be a powerful corporate lawyer, but she wanted to be a partner, but that she had perhaps too many moral qualms about what you had to do to people. There’s a scene just subsequent to that in a bar where she identifies herself as a professional killer. That’s how she saw herself behaving in there [at the deposition], and frankly, the scene that she played just before that with [the character of] Quinn, the main partner in the firm, who said, “I want him eliminated as a viable witness in this case,” she was not so much deposing him as she was destroying him.

SHELBY: . . . [W]e needed to see her be hard and be the good soldier and do what she needed to do. But we also, as the audience, we needed to have her do it in such a way that we wouldn’t hate her. We just would not hate her for the rest of the movie. And that is a balancing act that’s very difficult to write.

[FILMS ABOUT PRODUCTS LIABILITY]

DEDMAN: [T]here have been a number of films since Class Action was released that address this sort of products liability complex litigation class action context. What is it about those types of lawsuits that make them a good backdrop for films?

CORT: It’s always a greedy, irresponsible, immoral force against people who can’t really defend themselves and somebody standing up to them. That’s been at the heart of movies since Mr. Smith Goes to Washington back in the thirties. There’s been this kind of war in America so to speak between the enormous kind of secret respect we give to people who travel and become famous and rich and powerful and this hatred we have for people who trample our rights and the rights of the defenseless. So, I think thematically this has been a part of our society and hence been a part of movies ever since. You don’t see that much of it in major Hollywood movies any more because I think the sense in Hollywood is that the courtroom drama has been completely taken over by television and they just don’t want to do it. . . . But it’s not a staple of Hollywood film any more because Hollywood film is so dominantly about the created world and fantasy worlds that are aimed at sort of all ages audiences and most importantly are aimed overseas. And one of the problems with doing courtroom drama or doing a class action lawsuit like this is that it doesn’t travel well because the laws of other countries are different, the things that are crimes here and not necessarily crimes abroad . . . . So, I think the foreign or the international demands of the business mitigate against anything other than the guy who kills somebody is wronged kind of thing. So I think class action kinds of stuff is, or products liability are becoming more difficult to make work.

[THE PRESIDENTIAL CONNECTION]

DEDMAN: Two of the actors in your film went on the play Presidents of the United States. Donald Moffat in Clear and Present Danger and Gene Hackman in Absolute Power and Welcome to Mooseport and then Fred Thompson [who played a corporate representative in Class Action] actually ran for President. Is that a coincidence?

CORT: If I’m not mistaken, Donald Moffat also played LBJ in a movie.

DEDMAN: That was before Class Action. Is there a presidential coincidence there?

AMES: I’ll answer that question with a line from a review that I read shortly after the movie came out, where a reviewer was pontificating about the movie and actually liked it, but said “Can it be a coincidence that Maggie’s father’s first name is the same as the first name of the second in command in Citizen Kane?” And I read it and out loud I said, “Yes, it can be.”

[LAWYERS AND QUALITY OF LIFE]

DEDMAN: One thing that is always on the forefront of discussions in lawyer magazines and publications is the quality of life issue and how lawyers who are traditionally workaholics can achieve some type of balance between the work they need to do and their obligations to their family. What do you think that the movie says about those issues in light of the strained the relationship between Jed and Maggie?

AMES: If given his choice, Jed would always be working. Jed is a classic workaholic ,and Maggie has inherited that. I also think that the lack attention that Jed and probably Maggie to paid to their familial relationship growing up was something that was bound to bear fruit later on down the line and also put the mother in the position of being the arbiter between these two.

SHELBY: There’s no question that workaholism has worked a great deal on Maggie and Jed and really, I think, many achievers in our country, I don’t know any great thing to say about it except it’s just reality. And I think it’s worse now for attorneys than ever with the decline in opportunities for employment. I would not want to be an attorney. Of, course being a screenwriter wasn’t that far off.

[DEFENSE FIRM AS GOOD GUY IN A FILM?]

DEDMAN: You mentioned that part of the appeal for some of the movies that have been released over the years depicting these types of lawsuits is the David versus Goliath angle – the powerless taking on powerful interests. Do you ever think there will be a film, or is there a way to tell a story, where the large corporate interest isn’t necessarily the bad guy in the lawsuit?

SHELBY: Well, definitely. Good drama is the gray part where you can be ambivalent about who is the good guy and who is the bad.

CORT: I’m not sure where the story is when Goliath beats David. So I don’t know, I’m not, I don’t quite see that.

AMES: What we have here, Jim, is the perfect differentiation between a producer and a writer.

AMES: I think the writer is saying, “Now, wait a minute, this could be interesting. Let’s make this dog dance.”

DEDMAN: Well, is it just that the stakes are not as high if the big company . . .

CORT: You’re suing them and you falsified your claim to make them look bad, I guess. But I don’t really see that. . . . I don’t know what I’m watching there or what I’m supposed to feel. You know, there’s again, I think “The Good Wife” does a lot of ambivalent stuff.

SHELBY: There’s always a bigger firm that is more corrupt, you know?

AMES: There’s the movie: A firm that thinks of itself as being completely corrupt and then comes up against somebody who’s more corrupt.

CORT: Yeah, but then it’s like a pox on everybody . . . Who cares?

[SHELBY, AMES, AND DEF LEPPARD]

DEDMAN: I have to ask [Chris and Carolyn] about “Hysteria – The Def Leppard Story.” How did you get involved in that and how did you prepare to write that script?

. . .

AMES: [Our agent] said “I have this strange news for you.” She said “I’ve put you up for all kinds of projects which you would have been absolutely perfect for and you haven’t gotten them. As a group, I put you up for this and they jumped through hoops to get you.”

SHELBY: We had done a movie that was a TV movie that had not been made on, was it Marge Schott or was it – we had become kind of pigeon-holed in doing autobiographical stories or real stories about people and doing them in a way that, generally, most of the people were proved despicable but we did them giving them the benefit of doubt and depicting their background so that people could understand how the Marge Schotts of the world could happen and characters like that. And so they had read Marge Schott and they had read a project for Proctor & Gamble and they loved that we were able to take [on a] very complex context. We also did a thing on the Olympics bid in Utah and how it was achieved . . . . And they loved how we were able to take very big concepts and compress them into something with a story like that we could do in an economic amount of time. But we were so wrong on every other level . . . we were just too old and you wouldn’t think of us to write this and I had a classical music background. . . . I think one of the things that they did like about us was that we weren’t huge Def Leppard fans . . . . We were going to ask the hard questions and we were going to do our best to make it a compelling story without making it too syrupy.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, through her agent, declined a request for an interview. Samantha Shad, one of the writers, also declined our request for an interview.]

Big news today from GWB headquarters. We are opening an office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here’s the text of our preliminary press release on the matter:

GALLIVAN, WHITE & BOYD, P.A. OPENS CHARLOTTE, NC OFFICE

Greenville, S.C. – Gallivan, White and Boyd, P.A., headquartered in Greenville, S.C., is pleased to announce that it is opening an office in Charlotte, N.C. The firm was founded more than six decades ago in Greenville, S.C. and is one of the Southeast’s leading litigation and business law firms. C. William McGee, the firm’s Managing Shareholder, stated, “We have seen a significant increase in the demand for our services in North Carolina. Our new Charlotte office will allow the firm to serve our clients more effectively and efficiently throughout the region. We look forward to providing our clients with a full array of business and litigation services throughout the state.”

With 44 attorneys and 56 support staff, Gallivan, White & Boyd was ranked by Chambers USA in 2010 as a leading law firm for business. The firm was also ranked by U.S. News and Best Lawyers as a Best Law Firm. Its new office, located in SouthPark at 5960 Fairview Road, opened in March, 2011.