The judge reigns that the CAA may have put the staff editor “The Newsroom” on the list but did not steal Pilot

In a decision rendered on Monday, a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that the CAA had not stolen a pilot idea of ​​the former staff editor of “The Newsroom” John Musero.

However, judge Kerry Benserger determined that the agency could have a blacklist Musero and will allow this claim to be decided by a jury in a trial to start on October 27.

Musero, a former personnel prosecutor and staff for Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom”, filed his trial in 2019. In this document, he said that he had developed a pilot for a show established inside the Office of the American Prosecutor General and that CAA had optionized the show, entitled “main justice”, with the company Mark Gordon.

CAA has never developed the series, but Musero Musero accused the agency of developing “main justice” in a package presented at CBS in 2018, but with another writer, Sascha Penn, credited as a creator. Among the similarities between his show and the show presented to CBS, Musero said that the two pilots ended with the Attorney General in the face of an assassination attempt.

Musero also accused CAA of Vioder the fiduciary obligations by also originating the Musero pilot for a minimum wage by offering only the show to Mark Gordon, also a CAA client. Musero also said that the studio had not properly marketed another program on which he worked and did not find a job after the cancellation of “The Newsroom”.

CAA of course denies all the accusations.

Bensinger struck his decision in part to the influence of “The West West West West West” of the creator of “The Newsroom” Aaron Sorkin on the two pilots, affirming in part: “The style and the pace of each main judicial project are attributable to the same influential television program … further on, in a political legal project like a DOJ drama, which is not much weight.
The two parties consider “the western wing” as a representative of a particular style. »»

Bensinger also said that the other similarities were not protected and that there was evidence that the Penn pilot had been written before that of Musero.

Regarding the claim of black list, according to the trial, CAA has secretly placed Musero on a list of “underperforming writers” and that CAA hid from him that he was in danger of being abandoned. Musero also said that his agents had essentially arrested the representative actively.

CAA lawyers have argued that the request for a black list should be launched because there was “no authority to maintain that an agent or a talent agency owes homework and honesty to customers”.

Bensinger rejected this argument, stating in part: “Defenders find it difficult to assert the proposal that a talented agent can act dishonestly, unfairly and contrary to the best interests of their client with impunity. Generally,”[a]n agent is charged to measure with the duty of honesty and loyalty to his principal,
not only in form but in substance. (Kinert c. Wright (1947) 81 Cal.App.2d 919, 925.) Defenders fail to carve out talent agents of this general rule. »»

“The CAA is satisfied by the judge’s decision, rejecting John Musero’s complaint that the CAA has diverted its idea for a pilot,” the agency said in a statement.