Court makes ruling that MAY lead to Disney regaining all Pooh rights by 2004

[CTXRover]

Here is a Miami-Herald article that describes U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper's amendment to her own ruling made a while ago that Clare Milne, the granddaughter of Pooh author A.A. Milne, couldn't regain her rights to Pooh from the Sleisinger family. With this new ruling, Cooper gives Clare Milne the opportunity now to appeal that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and, if she wins, could regain rights to the Pooh works from the Sleisingers by November 2004.

Clare Milne has already made an agreement with Disney that if she was to regain her family's rights to the Pooh works, that she would hand all rights to Disney. The earlier decision completely forbidded her to do this, but now that same judge feels there is "substantial ground for a difference of opinion", which may indicate that the appeal may in fact go in favor of Clare Milne, granting Pooh back to her, and thus all to Disney.

This Pooh case just keeps getting more interesting

 

[prberk]

Yeah! :sohappy:

 

[DOUG]

I think Disney has something to hide on this one. Shredding documents just says something fishy has happened......:brick: I've heard that stock holders have been trying to sue Disney because if Disney loses this lawsuit they owe a good $1 billion to the Slessinger family....that's a pretty big loss....just imagine the plummeting stock......

 

[CTXRover]

Originally posted by DOUG
I think Disney has something to hide on this one. Shredding documents just says something fishy has happened......:brick: I've heard that stock holders have been trying to sue Disney because if Disney loses this lawsuit they owe a good $1 billion to the Slessinger family....that's a pretty big loss....just imagine the plummeting stock......

There is A LOT of fishy things on both sides of this case. There is no doubt in my mind that both the Sleisingers and Disney have done some, I don't want to say illegal, but unusual things. Disney shredded documents while the Sleisingers hired a released convict to steal documents from Disney's corporate trash.

The way that the Sleisinger's are continously losing lawyers one after the other is very fishy, especially since their first guy left without any real explanation and he has in the past won some big cases against Disney (the Katzenburg case for instance). They keep saying Disney is pushing the case longer and longer (which is true), yet everytime they are to come to court for things Disney has accused them of (the stealing of documents) their lawyer all of the sudden leaves due to either "differences in opinion" or "cost". Sounds to me like they know something that will either result in them losing the case or possibly even something illegal the Sleisinger's are asking them to do.

I'll have to check, but I don't think they owe a billion, its high though, but I don't think it is that high.

 

[CTXRover]

I can't find what Disney would owe the Sleisinger's for certain. But several articles place it at hundreds of millions while others place it around 200-300 million in royalties. Its a lot, but not near a billion.