Entertainment & Sports Law

Another Star MLB Player is Charged in Steroids-Related Case: Miguel Tejada

In a week already packed with news about alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball during the past decade, another player has taken center stage. All-star shortstop Miguel Tejada of the Houston Astros (and formerly of the Baltimore Orioles) has been charged in a criminal information with lying…

Feb 11, 2009 1:20 AM CST

Suits Dispute Distribution Rights to Sundance Winner ‘Push’

Two companies have filed lawsuits claiming they have the rights to distribute Sundance film festival winner Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire. The movie, which tells the story of an illiterate incest victim in 1980s Harlem, won both the grand jury and audience awards at the festival, the Associated…

Feb 6, 2009 6:27 PM CST

Excluding Steroids Tests Is Key to Barry Bonds Trial Strategy

As evidence recently made public in the Barry Bonds case makes clear, excluding blood tests that allegedly show he took steroids is key to his trial strategy in a federal obstruction of justice and perjury case. And a federal judge in San Francisco seems sympathetic to the famed slugger’s argument…

Feb 5, 2009 7:49 PM CST

Copyright in the Age of YouTube

As user-generated sites flourish, copyright law struggles to keep up

Feb 2, 2009 4:29 AM CST

Six Dreier Stein Entertainment Lawyers Jump to Robins Kaplan

A lawyer who has represented Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan is one of six entertainment lawyers jumping to Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. The lawyers are leaving Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George, a Santa Monica, Calif., law firm once affiliated with the troubled Dreier law firm in New York.…

Jan 23, 2009 5:50 PM CST

Baseball’s Roger Clemens is Subject of Grand Jury Probe

In the latest twist of fate for embattled baseball great Roger Clemens, the former star pitcher reportedly is the target of a federal grand jury investigation in Washington, D.C., concerning his testimony before Congress last year about steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. If the grand jury charges Clemens with lying…

Jan 13, 2009 7:34 PM CST

Associate’s Video Game Practice Idea Scores Big

Last year, young lawyer Shawn Foust had a proposal for one of the senior partners at the white-shoe Sheppard Mullin. This idealist practicing in Century City was excited to meld two things he loved, games and the law. So he proposed an entire practice to the video game industry. A…

Dec 3, 2008 9:15 PM CST

Lathrop & Gage to Open Calif. Office By Merging With Spillane Trial Boutique

A growing 300-attorney law firm located largely in the Midwest is establishing a foothold on the West Coast by combining with a Los Angeles trial and intellectual property boutique. The merger of Lathrop & Gage with the seven-lawyer Spillane Shaeffer Aronoff Bandlow trial boutique on Jan. 1, 2009 will not…

Nov 21, 2008 11:26 PM CST

Fox Lawyers Tell Movie Studio to Stop Making Knockoffs

The studio 20th Century Fox has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a low-budget competitor that is releasing a movie with a similar name and release date to Fox’s own remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Fox is releasing the movie starring Keanu Reaves and Jennifer Connelly in December,…

Nov 12, 2008 6:51 PM CST

Another Philadelphia TV News Anchor Spat Hits the Courts

Warring former news anchors at Philadelphia television stations are creating a litigation boom for at least one local law firm. In the latest lawsuit, filed yesterday in Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court, ex-NBC10 anchor Lori Delgado, 28, says she quit her job because of fear for her safety and her husband’s…

Nov 11, 2008 8:59 PM CST

Retired NFL Players Get $28.1M, Including $21M in Punitives

Developing: A federal jury in San Francisco today awarded $7.1 million in compensatory damages to a group of retired National Football League players, finding that the NFL Players Association didn’t properly market their images. The plaintiffs also got $21 million in punitive damages, according to a Canadian Press article. “The…

Nov 11, 2008 12:39 AM CST

2 Baker & Daniels Partners Leave for Athletics Director Posts

If you ever had a dream of becoming your alma mater’s athletics director, making partner at your law firm could be good job training. At least that’s what two former partners at the sports-savvy Indianapolis-based Baker & Daniels have discovered. In July, John “Jack” Swarbrick, a former Baker partner, became…

Nov 3, 2008 5:38 PM CST

C-SPAN Seeks to Broadcast ‘Fleeting Expletives’ Oral Arguments

U.S. Supreme Court litigator Carter Phillips doesn’t plan to use a euphemism for the F-word when he argues the so-called fleeting expletives case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Now C-SPAN wants to broadcast audiotapes of the argument, raising the issue whether it will violate the Federal Communications Commission rule that…

Oct 29, 2008 11:52 AM CDT

‘Survivor’ Winner Can’t Raise Cheating Allegations in Tax Case

An early winner of the CBS Survivor television reality show says its producer promised to pay the tax on his winnings, after he caught employees smuggling food to other contestants in Borneo in 2000. But his claim—which CBS denies—wasn’t relevant in Richard Hatch’s trial on tax evasion charges, a trial…

Oct 16, 2008 6:32 PM CDT

Dog Breeder Sues Movie Studio Over Famous Canine Name: Rin Tin Tin

A Texas dog breeder whose family has been protecting the legacy of Rin Tin Tin for more than 50 years says in a lawsuit that a new movie has sullied it. Daphne Hereford contends that Finding Rin Tin Tin, a foreign movie that was released on DVD in this country…

Oct 7, 2008 8:38 PM CDT