Judge Blasts Bogus Proof, Rejects Claim Against Disney

(NY Law Journal) – If only the PalmPilot had existed in 1995, writers Ronnie Niederman and Judith Shangold might still have a federal case that their idea was swiped by the Walt Disney Co. But the product with that name did not hit the market until 1997 – almost two years after the two plaintiffs claimed they had given Disney a treatment, or basic story line, for a children's animated theatrical feature that contained several references to the hand-held personal organizer. That was too much for Southern District of New York Judge William H. Pauley, who called the purported 1995 treatment "irrefutable evidence" that the two plaintiffs fabricated evidence. Pauley took the rare step of punishing the plaintiffs by dismissing their case. And for good measure, after citing the "substantial burdens" imposed on the defendants, "for more than two years," the judge ordered that the plaintiffs pay the other side's attorney fees in an amount to be determined later. The judge was particularly upset that the plaintiffs stuck to their story after being caught red-handed. "Their egregious conduct was prolonged and calculated to advance their claims," he said in Shangold v. The Walt Disney Co., 03 Civ. 9522. "Even now, in the face of indisputable evidence, Plaintiffs do not relent."

The pair wrote their first treatment of the series "Starmond the Wizard," or "Starmond," in 1989. Referred to in the litigation as T1, it was rejected by Disney in 1994 as "an unexciting, confusing and mostly listless fairy tale ... that does little to merit further consideration." The pair claimed they revised the T1 in 1995 to add a baseball story line in five pages of handwritten notes. This alleged revision, called T1a, made several references to the term "Palm Pilot." "However, handheld devices with that name did not exist at the time Plaintiffs claim they created T1a," Pauley said. In fact, it was not until November 1995, about five months after the T1a was supposedly submitted to Disney, that Palm Computing Inc. learned through a trademark search that it could not call its promising handheld idea "Taxi" and elected instead to call it the "Pilot." This did not stop the plaintiffs from ultimately suing Disney and its subsidiary, Miramax Books in 2003 for stealing their idea by publishing "Summerland," a novel by author Michael Chabon that used a baseball theme.

D'oh.