{"id":375,"date":"2018-10-10T21:34:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T01:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=375"},"modified":"2018-10-14T11:36:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T15:36:09","slug":"injunction-vacated-defendants-free-as-a-bird-to-distribute-film-about-lynyrd-skynyrd-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=375","title":{"rendered":"Injunction Vacated; Defendants Free as a Bird to Distribute Film about Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Van Zant v. Cleopatra Records, Inc.<\/a>, [17\u20102849](October 10, 2018), the Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court and vacated the injunction against defendants’ distribution of a film about Artimus Pyle’s experience as the drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the award of\u00a0$632,110.91 in attorneys’ fees.<\/p>\n

Pyle was a late-comer to\u00a0Lynyrd Skynyrd, and was one of the survivors of the\u00a0October 20, 1977, plane crash that killed several other band members. Several of the survivors agreed never to use the\u00a0Lynyrd Skynyrd name, but in 1987\u00a0surviving band members embarked on a tribute tour to Lynyrd\u00a0Skynyrd, which prompted a lawsuit that was settled with a consent order that:<\/p>\n

3. Each of the Individual Defendants . . . shall have the right to\u00a0exploit his . . . own respective life story in any manner or medium,\u00a0including . . . [a] motion picture[] . . . . In such connection, each of the\u00a0foregoing shall have the right to refer to \u201cLynyrd Skynyrd\u201d and\u00a0related matters and to describe and portray his experience(s) with\u00a0\u201cLynyrd Skynyrd;\u201d provided that no such exploitation of life story\u00a0 rights is authorized which purports to be a history of the \u201cLynyrd\u00a0Skynyrd\u201d band, as opposed to the life story of the applicable\u00a0individual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cleopatra approached Pyle for assistance in producing a film titled \u201cStreet
\nSurvivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash,\u201d and after a news article revealed that a film was in the works, plaintiff’s brought suit to enforce the consent order.\u00a0 The district court issued a\u00a0permanent injunction prohibiting distribution of the Film and other related\u00a0activities, reasoning that even though Cleopatra not a party to the consent order, it had acted \u201cin concert or\u00a0participation\u201d with Pyle to produce the Film, which violated the Consent\u00a0Order.<\/p>\n

The Second Circuit rejected the argument that this was a classic First Amendment violation involving an unlawful prior restraint, noting that no government entity was involved in obtaining the order.\u00a0 \u00a0The Second Circuit said that nevertheless, the case implicates free speech concerns,\u00a0and two circumstances counsel caution in permitting an expressive work to be\u00a0enjoined: first, it involves\u00a0a restraint on the\u00a0viewing of an expressive work prior to its public availability, and second, the injunction restricts
\nthe actions of an entity that was not a party to the contract.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the Second Circuit concluded that the injunction was unenforceable because it was insufficiently specific, permitting what it also appeared to prohibit.\u00a0\u00a0Pyle was permitted to make a movie that describes\u00a0his experiences with Lynyrd Skynyrd and to refer to the band, but\u00a0he may not make a movie that is a history of the band.\u00a0\u00a0The script for the movie that Cleopatra has been enjoined from distributing\u00a0illustrated the inconsistency, or at least the insufficient specificity, of the terms of\u00a0the Consent Order. The script tells the story of the plane crash in which some members of the band were killed and from which Pyle walked away.\u00a0\u00a0That crash is part of the \u201chistory\u201d of the band, but it is also an \u201cexperience\u201d of Pyle\u00a0with the band, likely his most important experience. Provisions of a consent decree\u00a0that both prohibit a movie about such a history and also permit a movie about\u00a0such an experience are sufficiently inconsistent, or at least insufficiently specific,\u00a0to support an injunction.<\/p>\n

Two judges joined the opinion, but wrote separately that in their view the movie script did not violate the Consent Order, further illustrating the point that the Consent order was insufficiently specific.<\/p>\n

Private agreements that restrain speech must be clear and unambiguous to be enforceable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Van Zant v. Cleopatra Records, Inc., [17\u20102849](October 10, 2018), the Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court and vacated the injunction against defendants’ distribution of a film about Artimus Pyle’s experience as the drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}