A Los Angeles jury Thursday awarded producers Alan Ladd Jr. and Jay Kanter precisely the $3.2 million in damages on their allocation claim against Warner Bros. that attorney John Gatti asked for in closing arguments Monday, Variety reports.
The 12-member jury voted unanimously in favor of liability and 10-2 on damages.
“We are very happy with the verdict,” said Gatti, who also is Ladd’s son-in-law. “The evidence supported Laddie and Jay’s claim. Laddie and Jay contributed greatly to Warner Bros. with the making of these great films and they were owed the money that has been awarded to them.”
A spokesman for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. said, “While we are disappointed by the jury’s verdict, we understand their confusion over damages. We will now look at this entire proceeding and hope to rectify this erroneous decision at this level or on appeal.”
Veteran entertainment attorney Michael Bergman, who tried the case for Warners, added, “We have not yet begun to fight.”
Ladd and Jay Kanter, his partner in the Ladd Co., claimed that when 11 of their films — including “Blade Runner,” “Body Heat,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Night Shift” and the “Police Academy movies” — were licensed to the domestic and international television and cable market, they were packaged with inferior films and the fees attributed to their films were unfairly under-allocated. They sued Warners in 2003.
