Feisty Nikki Finke, Esteemed Hollywood Blogger, Sticks Up for Actor, Sues Financial Firm
MORE The Transom
On Friday, March 28, the journalist Nikki Finke, a household name in Hollywood since her blog Deadline Hollywood became a must-read during the Writers Guild of America strike, posted an item about veteran actor Jack Klugman suing NBC Universal over residuals from his hit 1970’s show, Quincy, M.E.
“This really sounds like one of the worst cases of phony-baloney studio accounting, not to mention sheer arrogance, in Hollywood history,” she wrote. “Geez, when is Big Media going to stop this larceny?”
Ms. Finke, whom The Observer anointed its 2007 Media Mensch of the Year, quoted Mr. Klugman via his Beverly Hills attorneys Johnson & Johnson: “I don’t want their money. I want my money. I can’t believe they’ve collected over $250 million and they say they are still in the hole.”
The blogger, who has earned a reputation for championing the little guy against the moguls, neglected to mention that this law firm, specifically partner Neville Johnson, is representing her in an as-yet-
unreported class action lawsuit she filed against E-Trade in 2006 for surreptitious recording.
Asked about the lawsuit, Ms. Finke said that she did not want to discuss her personal life. She said that she intended to go back and correct the item to include the fact that Mr. Johnson was also one of her attorneys. “I totally forgot,” she said. “I’m very scrupulous about things like that. It was a busy news day. I was posting a lot of breaking stories. And I wasn’t thinking about myself.” (She said she became aware of the Klugman case via an e-mail that was sent to various journalists.)
The ongoing class action suit, which Ms. Finke filed under her married name, Nikki Greenberg (she explained that this is simply the name that appears on her passport), echoes a beef she apparently had with Women’s Wear Daily reporter Jacob Bernstein last July; according to an editor’s note, WWD pulled Mr. Bernstein’s profile of her from their Web site “based on confusion over Bernstein’s taping of a conversation he had with Finke”—which is illegal in California, where Ms. Finke resides.
According to Ms. Finke, E-Trade pulled similar shenanigans. “On or about August 15, 2006 plaintiff Nikki Greenberg placed a telephone call to the E-Trade Financial Center in Beverly Hills, California,” reads her complaint, a copy of which was obtained by the Transom. “At the time, plaintiff Greenberg spoke to Jeremy Zezini, an employee of defendant E-Trade Financial Center. During the course of that telephone conversation, plaintiff Greenberg disclosed personal identifying and financial information. At no time during that conversation was plaintiff Greenberg informed that her telephone call was being eavesdropped upon, wiretapped, recorded and/or monitored.”
Though she is the only named plaintiff in the suit, it is a class action lawsuit and so also includes a plea for “all those similarly situated.”
Calls to E-Trade were not returned.
Ms. Finke clearly is fond of her lawyer: In a Deadline Hollywood post published months before the E-Trade lawsuit was filed, she described Mr. Johnson as “a foremost go-to guy for invasion-of-privacy torts” and mentioned that “many victims of the [Anthony] Pellicano wiretapping scandal” were lining up to meet with him.
With different representation, the journalist in 2002 sued the New York Post, its parent company News Corp., and Disney in Los Angeles, a case that was settled out of court.
In September 2001, she sued an L.A. condo management company over an injury in the common area of the building she lived in and received a settlement of $36,267.
Mr. Klugman isn't the only actor who appears to have taken it on the chin. My business partner, an actor of over 30 years in Hollywood, has a similar but sadder story. I'm writing a screenplay about it. I'll not mention his name in this post (at this time) however, I can assure you he will tell all and pity those who perpetrated what they did against him. It was inhumane and blatant! He's still working hard to make up for the fortune that was stolen from him.
Nikki Finke's "must read" reporting of the WGA writers strike left out a key fact that she and Neville Johnson already know. That the WGA is a seriously corrupt union that actually works for the major studios. The same is true of SAG and the DGA. All three unions work to assist the studios in stealing money meant for individual artists: actors, writers and directors.
Ms. Finke failed to report on the fact that Neville Johnson is currently suing all three Guilds over the issue of foreign levies, which are hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes collected in many foreign countries. The lawsuits claim that the unions are mishandling the funds, and not properly paying their own members. Moreover, the Guilds collect money from around the world for actors, directors and writers who are not Guild members, and fail to pay them completely. Not only has Ms. Finke not reported on the fact that the WGA was being sued by her own lawyer during the strike, she actually tried to have a story killed at the LA Weekly that discussed the issue. It was written by organized crime reporter Dennis McDougal.
http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/double-cross-at-the-wga/16249/
So why wouldn't Ms. Finke report on a major Hollywood union scandal that her own lawyer, who she lavishly praises elsewhere, is intimately involved with? Why does her blog go into tiny details about every aspect of the WGA strike but fail to mention that the WGA is being sued for stealing hundreds of millions from writers? It's because Neville Johnson doesn't want a lot of publicity about these important lawsuits because he wants to settle them out of court quietly in an effort to cover up the union's crimes and make himself a nice fee in the process.
The class action lawsuit, WILLIAM RICHERT VS. WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA. was brought by accomplished filmmaker William Richert, whom Mr. Johnson was representing. Fortunately for writers and artists everywhere, Mr. Richert is a man of integrity who isn't interested in helping the studios and Guilds cover up this crime. So when Johnson insisted on trying to settle (and cover up) with the unions, Mr. Richert fired him and is in the process of hiring another lawyer.
For more information on this important scandal, including key documents, check out Eric Hughes website at: www.screenrights.net.