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Happy Days cast lose claim in CBS lawsuit

A judge has thrown out a key claim in a lawsuit by former cast members of Happy Days -but the case will proceed.

A Los Angeles judge has thrown out a key claim by former cast members of Happy Days in a $10 million lawsuit against CBS to compensate them for years of merchandising using their likeness.

The judge ruled CBS did not commit fraud by shortchanging them money from slot machines featuring their faces and other consumer products.

The decision means Marion Ross, Don Most, Anson Williams, Erin Moran and the widow of Tom Bosley cannot receive punitive damages at the trial.

But the case will still proceed, scheduled for June 2012.

In April, the actors sued CBS for $10 million claiming they never received revenue statements related to merchandising.

The show, which originally aired from 1974 to 1984, “represented to the public what the best of America has to offer,” Anson Williams recently said. “The friendships, the opportunities, the warmth. Unfortunately, now Happy Days also represents the worst of America — of what major companies are trying to get from it, trying to use it for, and forgetting the family it created.”

CBS responded with a motion to dismiss several claims in the suit, and the judge has now granted that request with respect to the fraud, concealment and conversion claims.

“We are thrilled that the court has thrown out all claims for punitive damages and significantly narrowed this to a case of contract interpretation,” CBS told the Hollywood Reporter.

11 Responses

  1. Remember how Fox thought George Lucas was an idiot (in 1976) when he negotiated the merchandising rights to the characters of his new (financially troubled) sci-fi flick, Star Wars?

    “Nobody wants merchandising from movies – never worked before” chuckled Fox up their sleeves…

    About the same time, the families of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff successfully sued Universal Pictures for a slice of the huge financial pie the studio hauled in from heaps of merchandising & re-issuing of the old Dracula & Frankenstein films to TV in ’58 – b-e-f-o-r-e videos and DVDs came in … but, a few months later, Universal appealed against the judgement – and won.

    Tough luck kids…

  2. I don’t know,I think they have a legit claim.They signed up for a TV show,I would not think at that time they ( nor anybody else) would of thought they would of been plastered over slot machines and the like 30 years later.

  3. Remember that in the pre DVD and pre-internet days (not so long ago), a performer’s rights in a TV show or doing voice work for a TV show was limited to a set payment for doing the role paid by the studio. This was put into a legal and binding contract. Performers had no other rights. People of this era had no idea that DVD, online and marketing could make anyone money at all.

    This is why getting old TV shows on DVD or streaming online is so frought with dangers. In their prime day, networks would pay copyright holders (for music, live news snippets etc) a bare minimum for a “TV” or “Saturday morning licence” .

    Many moons later, these networks discover that that have to pay up again for all the copyrighted segments to be put on a DVD or on live streaming on the internet. This is why TV shows like Daria had 99% of its original music replaced by cover versions or changed and shows like “Muppet Babies” that used lots of copyrighted live action segments when it was on (1984-1991) will most probably never be released on DVD totally uncut.

  4. I really want to see seasons 5 onward on dvd as well as the final season of Mork and Mindy plus seasons 4 onwards of Laverne and Shirley.

    Enjoying Happy Days on 11. Missed some on TV1 especially the ones on now. Would love to see the final season. Wished they could show Laverne and Shirley.

    ABC3 should air classics from 9pm-6am, might do them good and increase their share.

  5. Don’t stars usually have no rights of any merchandising? If they did the Star Wars and Star Trek casts would be trillionaires by now. This case equates to the Boeing 707 designers getting a cut of every airline ticket for the past 50 years.

  6. Shame on these people for seeking a share of money that was made on their likenesses…! How dare they expect to be compensated for their work! They should just be grateful that they got paid what they did all those years ago! Who cares if someone else has made a truckload of money from their work since?! The cheek of it all….!

  7. Sad really that these actors are still living in the past……move on ….Happy Days is in th past….Get new careers….stop wingeing about what should have been….Seems like only “sad days” ahead for these losers….

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