It appears that a multimillion-dollar court case involving American adventure novelist
Clive Cussler (
Treasure of Khan) has finally come to a conclusion. As
Variety reports today:
After more than three months of courtroom sparring and eight days of jury deliberations, the verdict in author Clive Cussler’s battle against Philip Anschutz’s Crusader Entertainment over the 2005 feature “Sahara” came down to a split decision, with both sides claiming victory.
The verdict returned by the Los Angeles Superior Court jury Tuesday afternoon awards Crusader a total of $5 million in damages for past and future economic loss. But the jury also found that Crusader is obligated to pay Cussler about $8.5 million for the rights to the second of two Cussler books that Crusader licensed for a planned film series based on his Dirk Pitt adventure series.
The jury further decided that Cussler is entitled to the film rights to his books based on a finding that, under the terms of his contract, principal photography on “Sahara” did not start on time. The jury did not award Crusader any punitive damages.
To hear tell of it, the legal battle here could have been classified as a thriller in its own right. As the
Los Angeles Times reports:
Cussler initially sued in January 2004, demanding about $40 million on his claims that Anschutz’s producers failed to honor contractual rights that gave him “sole and absolute” approval over the “Sahara” screenplay.
In his countersuit, Anschutz alleged that Cussler fraudulently inflated sales numbers for the Pitt series to land a $10-million-per-book movie deal and that he refused to promote “Sahara” as promised. Anschutz sought $115 million in damages.
From my (perhaps cynical) perspective, the only clear winners here are the lawyers. Then again, if this lawsuit proved anything, it’s that Cussler--despite the bald inflation of his sales figures--certainly
does sell a lot of books.
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