TMZ is being sued for broadcasting allegedly stolen and confidential footage of an interview with Debbie Rowe soon after her ex-husband, Michael Jackson, died last July.
The details of this lawsuit filed today in California District Court by F. Marc Schaffel Prods. raise interesting questions about TMZ’s news operation, copyright issues, and the boundaries between an entertainment clip and a fair-use news product.
In the complaint, the plaintiff claims to be the owner of a 2003 filmed interview with Debbie Rowe. Some portions of the interview were aired in 2003, but others were held back as private and confidential, subject to a joint consent agreement between the interviewer and interviewee.
After Michael Jackson was indicted for child molestation in December 2003, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff obtained and executed a search warrant on Schaffel’s home and seized the interview. Two years later, the County Sheriff represented that he returned the property and hadn’t released the “confidential outtakes” to anyone.
But last July, TMZ broadcast those confidential outtakes that included a conversation where Rowe talks about needing sedatives. The plaintiff says that Rowe’s comments were made in the context of a joke about stage fright (UPDATE: Rowe’s stage fright during interviews, not Jackson’s, if that’s not clear), but taken by TMZ to tie past drug use to Jackson’s 2009 death from a drug overdose.
After TMZ aired the interview, Schaffel and Rowe demanded that the confidential outtakes be removed. TMZ first claimed the source of the video as coming from a British TV station, then fessed up that it came from the Santa Barbara Sherriff’s Department. The plaintiff says that when confronted, TMZ rescinded the story and claimed its source was confidential.
Schaffel is now seeking damages from TMZ over copyright infringement and conversion. Schaffel says the confidential outtakes have “an estimated value of potentially millions of dollars, the exact amount of which shall be proved at trial.”
Source: Hollywood Reporter
