Learn more about LeBron James’ lawsuit over a documentary film called ‘Black Ice.’
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James can breathe a sigh of relief as his lawsuit over a documentary film called ‘Black Ice’ is dropped. The documentary film is about a segregated hockey league for black players in Canada.
The lawsuit was filed by Billy Hunter. Notably, Hunter is a former head of the NBA Players Association and a former prosecutor.
Billy filed a $10 million lawsuit in September against LeBron James, rappers Drake and Future, and others over the documentary. He went on to claim that he holds exclusive rights to any movie about the Colored Hockey League.
But in a turn of events, Hunter has now dropped the lawsuit against LeBron and Maverick Carter, LBJ’s business partner.
However, according to reports, the suit is not dropped against Drake, Future, and the other offenders.
Further, Hunter has stated that if necessary, he will bring claims against James and Carter in the future.
“At this stage of the litigation before there was any discovery conducted we agreed to voluntarily dismiss these parties without prejudice,” Hutcher said in a statement. “If the discovery that we conduct shows that they were involved we will reinstitute our claims.” (h/t: New York Times) Notably, Larry Hutcher is the lawyer of Billy Hunter.
Hunter also gave his reasons for dropping the charges against James and Carter. He said that the charges are dropped because LBJ and Carter didn’t take part in the “negotiation or sale of the property.”
“We elected to let them out at this time with the understanding that if discovery shows that they were involved we will bring them back into the suit,” Hutcher said. “We have no desire to sue people that did not act in violation of our clients’ rights.” (h/t: New York Times)
What was the reason for the lawsuit?
Billy Hunter alleged that the high-profile defendants backstabbed him to cut a deal with the authors of the critically acclaimed book on which the documentary is based –“Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925.”
Hunter further claimed that he paid the book authors George and Darril Fosty $265,000 for the movie rights.
He claims the option deal was signed on March 25, 2019, and that he paid $10,000 for it at the time before paying $250,000 for “exclusive worldwide rights” to any “audiovisual” version of the story in February 2022.
Then, in October 2020, the book’s author, George Fosty called Hunter and informed him that other producers who were collaborating with LeBron James had approached him about creating the documentary.
At the time, according to Hunter, he refused to part up the rights to his passion project. On November 1, 2021, after learning about the movie in the Canadian press, Hunter sent a breach-of-contract letter to the defendants through his attorney.
Then, according to Hunter’s lawsuit, LeBron’s team offered to give the Fostys $100,000 and 3% of the film’s budget “to persuade the authors to break their agreement with” them.
Hunter filed a lawsuit against the Fostys and their publishing house as well.
On the other hand, “Black Ice” is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Davis and has already premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.
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