After Judge Judy Sheindlin sold her show’s library rights to CBS for $95,000,000, a talent agency sued her for their five percent portion of the sale. Judge Judy has said that if the talent agency can produce a contract showing how she owes them the money, she will admit defeat and “eat it on national television” – otherwise they need to back down.
A lawsuit has been filed by Talent Agency Rebel Entertainment Partners against Judge Judy and CBS in an attempt to recover profits. After Sheindlin bought the rights to her show and then sold them back to CBS for around $95 million, the talent agency claims it is owed five percent of the revenue from library sales. According to the firm, it was defrauded of money as a result of a strange method Sheindlin used to push them out of the deal: she bought CBS’ rights and subsequently sold them back to the television network.
In the lawsuit, Rebel alleges that it is a profit participant in the show’s library rights sale and should be paid accordingly. This legal action follows months after Rebel settled another lawsuit with CBS over Sheindlin’s $47 million annual compensation.
The legal action against the courtroom program is targeting the court library rights. In 2015, Judge Judy acquired the rights from CBS in order to resell them back to CBS for a substantial profit two years later in 2017.
Sheindlin spoke of Rebel president Richard Lawrence, saying: “I have not seen the complaint and can therefore only comment on what I have read, which suggests that I am being sued for ‘breach of contract.’ If that is the basis of Mr. Lawrence’s lawsuit, here is my challenge: If Mr. Lawrence can produce a contract, signed by Mr. Lawrence and me on the same page, at any time in history from the beginning of time, I will toast that contract, smear it with cream cheese and eat it on national television.”
Rebel states that CBS “seriously underestimated” the value of Judge Judy when they sold the rights to Sheindlin in 2015.
After Sheindlin “understood she was now sitting on a gold mine,” she hired Barron International Group to help her sell the license to her library of episodes for around $200 million. Then CBS showed renewed interest in working with Sheindlin.
Moonves is accused of having “blundered” by attempting to buy back the Judge Judy library in order to “avoid embarrassment over his colossal mismanagement.”
“Moonves knew that he would look like an incompetent buffoon if he had to explain to the CBS Board of Directors that he had essentially sold the Judge Judy catalog for a pittance less than two years prior, but was now proposing to buy it back for tens of millions of dollars,” the lawsuit reads.
Do you think Rebel has the documentation that will outsmart Judge Judy in her own arena?
