{"id":2132,"date":"2018-11-12T09:28:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T14:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/?p=2132"},"modified":"2023-07-25T11:44:01","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T15:44:01","slug":"court-is-not-ready-to-purge-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/2018\/11\/court-is-not-ready-to-purge-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Court is not Ready to Purge Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On July 17, 2014, Douglas Jordan-Benel sued<\/a> Universal Studios, United Talent Agency and screenplay writer, James Demonaco, claiming the movie The Purge <\/em>is based on his screenplay, Settler\u2019s Day<\/em>. \u00a0Jordan-Benel alleges in his complaint that he submitted his screenplay for consideration to United Talent Agency around July 8, 2011, but the work was ultimately rejected. \u00a0However, the same agent who passed on Settler\u2019s Day<\/em> supervised the agent of The Purge<\/em> writer James Demonaco. \u00a0As evidence, Jordan-Benel highlights the similarities in theme, setting and plot. \u00a0In the complaint, Jordan-Benel expresses four claims for relief: copyright infringement regarding The Purge<\/em> movie, copyright infringement regarding The Purge<\/em> script, breach of implied-in-fact contract, and declaratory relief.<\/p>\n

Universal Studios attempted to dismiss<\/a> the lawsuit, but California federal judge Michael Fitzgerald denied the motion. \u00a0Judge Fitzgerald finds Jordan-Benel\u2019s allegations \u201cplausible.\u201d \u00a0In his discussion of the denial, Judge Fitzgerald states<\/a>, \u201c[g]iven DeMonaco\u2019s relationship with [United Talent Agency] at the time of the transmission, Kramer\u2019s supervision of DeMonaco\u2019s own agent, and the relatively short interval between submission of the Script and the release of The Purge<\/em>, Plaintiff\u2019s allegation that the Script was passed on to DeMonaco is not implausible as a matter of law.\u201d \u00a0The judge did, however, grant the defendants’ motion to strike plaintiff\u2019s request for statutory damages and attorney\u2019s fees. \u00a0The defendants appealed the motion to dismiss but \u00a0the district court\u2019s decision was affirmed<\/a> by the appeals court.<\/p>\n

Currently, the lawsuit is in discovery<\/a>. \u00a0In September<\/a>, Jordan-Benel requested emails from DeMonaco, finding discrepancies in email timestamps. \u00a0He believed there may have been tampering in an attempt to make it look like DeMonaco created the The Purge <\/em>before he actually did. \u00a0Though the Judge originally granted the motion, further email requests have been denied<\/a>. \u00a0The Judge stated, \u201c[the] plaintiff does not convincingly demonstrate to the court that a deeper dive into the many [more] e-mails [the plaintiff later requested] will produce any evidence to resolve Plaintiff\u2019s suspicions about their authenticity.\u201d \u00a0Despite this, DeMonaco will have to turn over the original files of the screenplay.<\/p>\n

Katherine Khazal<\/em>\u00a0is an Entertainment Highlight Contributor for the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and a current first year student at Harvard Law School (Class of 2021).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Image<\/a>:\u00a0CC0 Public Domain<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 17, 2014, Douglas Jordan-Benel sued Universal Studios, United Talent Agency and screenplay writer, James Demonaco, claiming the movie The Purge is based on his screenplay, Settler\u2019s Day. \u00a0Jordan-Benel alleges in his complaint that he submitted his screenplay for consideration to United Talent Agency around July 8, 2011, but the work was ultimately rejected. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[36,15,99,93,87,113],"ppma_author":[382],"class_list":["post-2132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight","tag-copyright","tag-entertainment-2","tag-highlight","tag-intellectual-property","tag-litigation","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZjrR-yo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":382,"user_id":39,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jsel","display_name":"JSEL","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4abb87a025d5a7951a4b4249facf4d22ea8002b216770229a96689038d0f83bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}