Beyoncé has settled a New York City lawsuit that said she didn’t play fair in a deal for a videogame structured around her.
Court records show the case was closed Friday after the Grammy Award-winning singer and Gate Five LLC agreed to drop it.
A lawyer for Gate Five says the terms are confidential. A lawyer for Beyoncé hasn’t returned a call seeking comment.
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Embattled ex-child star Amanda Bynes was arrested May 23 for criminal possession of marijuana and allegedly throwing a bong out of a window — and since being released from custody, she’s spent every moment fighting back against the charges.
Two days after claiming via Twitter that that reports about her arrest were “all lies” and that she was sexually harassed by one of the officers who arrested her, Bynes has released another long message — supposedly the “last thing” she’ll say about her “mistaken arrest.” READ FULL STORY »
Looks like she didn’t have this one locked up: Yesterday, a U.S. District Court judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit that troubled actress Lindsay Lohan had brought against musicians Pitbull, Ne-Yo, and Afrojack over their 2011 song “Give Me Everything.”
Lohan claimed that the song’s lyrics were “destined to do irreparable harm” to her. Specifically, she took issue with this line, which references the time she spent in jail: “Hustlers move aside, so I’m tiptoein’, to keep flowin’ / I got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan.” READ FULL STORY »
A New York City judge has rejected the city’s attempt to subpoena outtakes from Ken Burns’s 2012 documentary The Central Park Five.
The movie follows the case of five men who were convicted for the 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger and exonerated for the crime in 2002 thanks to DNA evidence; the wrongfully accused brought a federal lawsuit against the city soon after they were vindicated. Last year, the city’s lawyers subpoenaed unreleased footage and other materials from Burns’s documentary to bolster their defense, arguing that the film had “crossed from documentary to pure advocacy.” Burns and his co-directors refused to comply, saying that the city’s request was “neither appropriate nor enforceable under the governing law for subpoenas served on professional journalists exercising their right of independent free speech.”
Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis of the United States District Court in Manhattan agreed with Burns in court yesterday, ruling that Burns is still entitled to journalistic privilege under the law — even though his film was sympathetic to the Central Park Five. “Indeed, it seems likely that a filmmaker would have a point of view going into a project,” the judge wrote.
Burns, who is currently vacationing with his family, released a statement about the decision, saying that he and his collaborators think Judge Ellis made “exactly the right ruling.” “We are also mindful that this ruling goes far beyond our current situation; this adds a layer of important protection to journalists and filmmakers everywhere,” he continued. “We recognize too that this attempt to subpoena our outtakes and notes only further delayed the nearly decade long efforts by the plaintiffs to seek redress. We hope this serves as a positive impetus to move that original suit to a resolution.”
Read more:
Movie Review: ‘The Central Park Five’
Ken Burns defies subpoena in ‘Central Park Five’ lawsuit — UPDATE
Writers Guild Awards honor ‘Perks’ and ‘Looper’ among surprises
Image Credit: Jason Redmond/AP
A local Los Angeles judge and now a federal court judge have denied a request by an actress in the controversial Innocence of Muslims film to have the movie’s 14-minute YouTube trailer removed.
United States District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald on Friday, following a Los Angeles Superior Court judge’s decision in September, struck down actress Cindy Lee Garcia’s motion for a preliminary injunction to take down the trailer, her attorney Cris Armenta announced in a press release. Garcia, who appears in Innocence of Muslims, claims she was duped and didn’t know the movie was a tirade against the prophet Muhammad. A court hearing previously set for Dec. 3 has been removed from the court’s calendar, according to the release.
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