Sat, 11 Jun 2022 16:04:20 -0700WeeblyMon, 02 Aug 2021 07:00:00 GMThttp://williamrichert.com/richert-v-wgaw/class-action-superlawyers-dismissed-by-plaintiff-william-richert-in-writers-guild-of-america-west-lawsuitDRAFT PROPOSAL FOR RIGHTS OF AMERICAN FILMMAKERS
RICHERT RICO LAWSUIT AIMED AT WGA AND CLASS ACTION LAWYERS TO DEMAND ACCOUNTING FOR MISSING BILLIONS FOR WRITERS, ACTORS AND DIRECTORS

This letter is from the Lead Plaintiff in a class action lawsuit created to get foreign taxes collected abroad for hundreds of thousands of American writers, actors and directors — both union and non union — money that was collected for them in Europe and around the world.

In 2010 at the time of settlement between the Guild and its own members the media declared:  “I04 million for writers in Richert lawsuit.”

But William Richert said afterward that number was preposterously low, and he’s been fighting union leaders and his own lawyers ever since.

This letter is the opening public salvo in a RICO broadside, and it applies to an entire industry.

Dear Mr/Ms Writer Actor Director Lawyer: 

Having spent the past 14 years lashed to the mast of a class action lawsuit involving 200,000 American writers actors and directors, I gotta forgive myself for stiff fingers and creaky, even painful, sentences as I climb down.

My new news is that recently I got a new idea how to get justice and money for my fellow union and freelance class action plaintiffs, tho they themselves barely know who they are.

As a direct result of the RICHERT VS WGA 2010 settlement, as a screenwriter you should have been receiving WGA foreign levy checks for your movies sold overseas — ditto if you are a director; the checks should match.

I can attest as Lead Plaintiff that my films, a short list which serve as a template in my role representing union and non union screenwriters whose works have sold abroad — have still not been accounted for as required by the settlement.  And there is no oversight of the settlement whatsoever except by the WGA itself, since the lawyers have walked off the case and I am not allowed to represent the class “in pro se.”

Therefore millions in foreign taxes collected in Europe and abroad for American screenwriters have never been accounted for by the WGA, and the settlement bearing my name has been used in a broad based scheme of “catch and kill” carried out by an unlikely band of profiteers among unions and studios, watching each others backs, amounting to a backroom theft of billions from individual artists.

This kind of thing could only happen in an earlier Hollywood, probably, but it has encumbered-plundered “Sister” Guilds throughout the movie world. At my last hearing, the Australian Writer’s Guild sent a lawyer on behalf of Peter Jackson and 64 other Australian screenwriters.

But every WGA-associated guild on earth is presently shafting its members under the aegis of basically unknown documents and court rulings.

It is no accident that the settlement has not produced any audit of the previous 20 years before the settlement; years when DVDs were selling in the millions, and WGA writers were getting cuts of large box office at theaters via foreign levies — years not accounted for — years when there was a secret percentage split between the WGA and Hollywood's "sister" major studios, an undisclosed “scheme”  written by Carl Gottlieb, then treasurer at the WGA, based on a secret contract between the WGA and the major studios which gave the studios 92% of the foreign taxes intended for directly for American artists alone.

“Foreign levies” exist because decades ago lawmakers across Europe realized that American distributors were taking virtually all the profits belonging to screenwriters actors and directors when their works were sold abroad.  To protect those who could not protect themselves, they enacted laws to give Americans a tiny piece of every sale, to ensure that the artist would at least get something.

But in the years before 2002 the studios took all this money for themselves, saying as copyright owners they were the creators too; this, the very opposite of what Europeans intended.

In 2002 Carl Gottlieb engineered what he called a “scheme” to get WGA members (and non members, totally unknown to them) 8% of what the studios were taking — not much benefit for screenwriters; studios had no rights to this money.

Oddly, a theft this large is almost invisible to the victims.

Unknown to you (I bet) a class action lawsuit was filed to right these wrongs; I was chosen as Lead Plaintiff in the class action on behalf of all screenwriters. (!)  I still am.  14 years later. 

Back then class attorney Neville Johnson said nobody would ever object to the gravity of the settlement because nobody could figure it out.  I admit I still have not figured it all out; but I’ve figured out enough.

WILLIAM RICHERT VS WGAW ET AL,  was settled in 2010.  I was promised a full accounting of who gets what with my independent film THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, providing the class action template as required of the Lead Plaintiff in a class action.

But no accounting has occurred.  To this very day the major studios continue in the dark to receive 50% of the money sent from Europeans to Americans for the sales of their films on video and broadcasting.  They are lawfully entitled to nothing.

Almost none of this has this been made public, which violates the  ‘full audit’ promises made to me regarding the at least 2.5 billion in foreign levies disbursed from Europe since 2002 — owed but not sent to WGA members, along with those roughly 200,000 writers/actors/directors who are not union members at all.

At one point the WGAw lawsuit was ‘bundled’ with the DGA and SAG settlements, which are similarly foul.

Announcing the 2010 settlement VARIETY proclaimed:  RICHERT LAWSUIT YEILDS 104 MILLION FOR WRITERS.

Yes maybe; where is the rest of the money?

Where is the transparency I was promised 11 years ago by prominent lawyers and even judges to induce and convince me to sign the settlement with my name alone on it? 

Mine was and is a heavy unasked-for responsibility, since — preposterously and unbelievably — I was then and now the only screenwriter named in the long litigation.  No doubt the few writers who actually paid attention to this during these years were afraid to piss off the Guild.  Bad use of fear.

As Lead Plaintiff I asked for a hearing in 2014 where I told a LA Superior court judge, in open court, that this entire class action was a swindle to get the 'guilds' and the studios off the hook for felonious long term theft from 105,000 ‘titles’ involving at least 200,000 writers directors and actors.

At the hearing I managed get on the court calendar,  judge Mary Strobel told me I could not represent the class “In Pro Se” and I needed to get a lawyer, and I did find a lawyer — who turned out to pursue the same kind of deal Neville had made.  This was not acceptable.

But the passage of time that buried the truth has also provided a backhoe to dig it up.

There has now been over ten years of fraudulent concealment, among other charges, moving the fraud-based civil lawsuit into RICO criminal territory. RICO allows for a single plaintiff to sue in a racket, and this is a racket.

As the single named writer in this lawsuit, I am duty bound to uphold the law.

BACKGROUND OF MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR SWINDLE THAT MANIPULATED LA SUPERIOR COURTS INTO PROTECTING A RACKET

Late afternoon in September 2005 my ‘super lawyer’ Neville Johnson called me at home to say that a ‘huge scandal’ had been uncovered at the WGA.  
He told me with umbrage that the Writers Guild of America had been diverting millions of writer’s foreign taxes to the major studios for decades, and the facts had been concealed from the members; worse, they were taking the funds meant for non-union writers and directors and actors as well. 
 Neville Johnson had just won a14.75 million dollar court judgment on my behalf for a soybean coffee company I started with River Phoenix. It made the LA Law Journal front page.
Also I had a personal knowledge of fraud at the WGA based on my case with John Wells and Aaron Sorkin over THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT and THE WEST WING credit phony arbitration.  I already knew the guild had problems with blatant lies hidden behind legal protections meant for ‘real’ labor unions; at the WGA more than a few ‘labor’ producer-writers have a net worth in the hundreds of millions.  Not your average AFL-CIO salaried blokes.
 In 2005 Neville told me on the phone that I would be one of at least 1,000 screenwriters involved in a class action to get the money due the writers, both union and non-union.  By 2010 the WGA lawyer upped that number to over 200,000 involved in 105,000 “titles” the WGA oversaw. 
I agreed it was preposterous and unbelievable the Writers Guild was taking money meant for non-union writers; non-union and freelance is what most American writers are. 

 The very next day in the NY TIMES Johnson’s law firm announced the class action “Richert Vs WGA” with me named as the lead plaintiff.
 I remain today the only writer plaintiff named in a lawsuit affecting tens of thousands world wide. My lawyer had lied to me.  
There were no other writers’ names in the original complaint, and no other writers or directors have joined this class action in all these years.  Early on, after I began fighting the  coverup-settlement,  Neville added the names of the heirs of two dead screenwriters to the complaint. 

That first week I figured out I was in some kind of setup I couldn’t understand but anyway seemed very suspicious. I wrote Mr. Johnson and demanded he take my name off the lawsuit. 

But then I changed my mind after a visit from a famous screenwriter who was also briefly President of the WGA.

A week or so after the class action was announced in the NY TIMES, the LA TIMES and VARIETY, Eric Hughes (AGAINST ALL ODDS) stopped by our apartment in Santa Monica with a stack of documents, including a $500 check made out to Charles Bukowski for his film, which had never been delivered or cashed – and now of course the poet was dead. 

 Hughes himself, who has written accurately and extensively about all this, is now also dead.  I am obviously not dead so I can write this, but the WGA is patient.
Hughes had copies of contracts made between the WGA and the studios without any kind of writer knowledge or oversight, contracts never agreed to by screenwriters or directors, certainly not non-union screenwriters, which basically gave the ‘majors’ — Sony, MGM, Disney, Fox, Universal, Warners et.al. — 92% of all our money for years, amounting to millions and millions never got to either members or non-members. 
After I send my instant letter of resignation Neville Johnson wrote the Judge that his firm would continue the lawsuit, representing the writers themselves.  Eric Hughes said the lawsuit was ‘fetid’ and I should stay out of it.  I did the opposite.  Thinking about Bukowski — and my own films — I realized that there would never be any kind of justice if I quit.  Come what may, I decided Bill Richert would stay in this lawsuit. This led to 14 years of labor for somebody who likes to pretend life should be a holiday.

To this very day those contracts negotiated by the Guild’s Carl Gottlieb have never been seen in court.  (Carl is a collaborator of Rob Reiner who was part of the “pre-arbitration panel” at the WGA in 1995 that gave Aaron Sorkin his unshared credit on THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT and THE WEST WING. Today Carl is listed among a number of my FB friends.  Maybe he’ll turn state evidence.)

Before being paid off in a six-figure settlement by the guild, the WGA residuals expert Teri Mial talked about shredding thousands of members’ and non-members’ checks adding up to millions of dollars. 
But this damning evidence never got noticed or written about except by me, and the WGA said I was a malcontent angry about the Sorkin case.  Any reporter saying anything publicly was contacted by WGA lawyers. 

During these years of hearings and all the hundreds of letters/filings I wrote, I could not forget that after the 2007 WGA strike there were lots writers who might have survived a lot better and even continued writing if they got the full amounts of the money owed to them, me included. But until today with the networks of social media, there was no way to sound the alarm.  I felt lots of times like the character in BODY SNATCHERS but getting the word out is even harder when it involves screenplays and taxes, which many people think are equally difficult to begin with.

The WGA sold out its devoted members, roped in unaware freelance writers, and, to my way of thinking, made deals with their greedy devils within.

— As for a billion or more in not identified foreign levies: during a most lucrative decades like the 80’s and 90’s, when the sales were fresh and the profits where high, the studios took the MGM Lion’s share of money for writer’s and divided the loot among themselves. That money is still not accounted for so the forgivers don't know who or what to forgive.

I figure those thousands of writers who never heard of this before may want to know what happened here, and I will as I am able continue sharing my experience and information.  Like many of my contemporaries, my limited time is stretched to the limits, which is why I'm using this opportunity to tell as much as I can.

Part of the delays and gaps in my protests these 14 years were due to various near-deadly sickness (like cancer, bummer) — which has finally been subdued this year but was a major factor for lengths of precious time, when a one-person team is unable to play; or plea, the game suffers.

QUICK-ISH HISTORY OF COMPLEX CASE; THE PLAINTIFF NEVER CLAIMED TO UNDERSTAND ALL OF IT, BUT MOST OF IT

Back in 2007 or so Neville was ready to settle the very day the court ‘certified’ the class action; I refused to accept his terms for the class he’d asked me to represent, and rigorously held to my role as Lead Plaintiff during what became several years of questions and court hearings before I finally agreed to sign off on the proposed settlement in 2010.  

I spent weeks immersed in Google searches on subjects I totally avoided during my years in school.  I got dizzy headaches but took notes.

Because of my furious but lawful court pleas I sent to the Judges, I was able to persuade 3 LA Superior Court judges to hold hearings for the record; Off the record Neville told the lawyer Kaplan that I was his worst nightmare.   Visa versa. 

I finally did sign the settlement,  but only after 3 days of meetings with Johnson’s partner Paul Kiesel where the famed expert lawyer told me that under class action laws, as Lead Plaintiff my film THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK INDIE was to be used as the template for both union and non-union members of the WGA/DGA/SAG ‘guilds’ and that the settlement would provide complete transparency accounting within 90 days. 

To verify the settlement was fair and had “teeth” Paul Kieisel went over the agreement line by line in his Beverly Hills office during 3 separate days of meetings.  In detail he explained the meaning of the legal language to me in front of my wife and Jonathan Lawton (PRETTY WOMAN) who was also acting as witness.  (Later on when I demanded that Neville Johnson be fired and demanded also that new lawyers be engaged, Johnathan hid out in a Glendale Motel as he was afraid the guild was following him.) 

But after the settlements were signed there was no accounting of THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK as template for all foreign levies due to US artists – certainly there was nothing of the transparency of the kind that was artfully promised me as the Named Plaintiff to induce me to sign the settlement; the broken promises meant that I,  along with the other 200,000-plus writers/directors/actors from 105 titles in the class I lawfully represented, was now bound by a settlement that was not only fraudulent at its inception, but was now basically institutionalized by the courts.  No doubt the number of those touched by the settlement has grown these past years.

(Judge West retired from the bench before finishing the case and joined the consulting firm of Joel Grossman, who was the expert witness for the WGA.  He also told the lawyers that my protests led to 'uncharted territory.') 

The fraud in WGA/SAG/DGA foreign levies meant for thousands has continued unabated since the settlement was signed.  No non-union writers or directors have ever gotten a fair notification that their rights were under assault and most of their money was going to studios without their knowledge or permission.   WGA members were never fairly told the substance of the case; never really able to defend themselves. Freelancers had no idea whatsoever.

In order to discredit me, both David Young and Dan Petrie wrote letters to the 20,000 union-related members about how the Richert lawsuit was bogus, and that it was only settled to somehow uphold and protect the rights of writers etc.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  However, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, I was blacklisted. 

Union screenwriters  are actually scared of David Young and union retribution.  I wrote an essay for VARIETY against the 2007 strike and Peter Bart got lots of angry calls and did not publish my follow-up he’d asked for.  

My fight and role in dealing with the unions and studios in court has not endeared me to anyone.  

Somehow, even with my somewhat reclusive character,  I have become an active repository of the arcane but ancient rights of authorship and reward. 

It is still  infuriating to somebody like me who spent hard years putting a movie together to watch WGA insiders plunder my work and the work of others; all absolved and then perpetuated in a ‘settlement’ underhandedly crafted by lawyers who had only recently represented those same studios connected to the lawsuit, but who came to advise both the WGA and our own class lawyers – men like Robert Hadl. 

Robert Hadl is a former studio attorney/executive who also advises both Neville Johnson and the WGA, and he was the man who informed Neville Johnson of the ‘scandal’ at the WGA foreign levy ‘scheme’ –  a scam which Carl Gottlieb also claims credit for – and almost laughably, Hadl also advised the WGA during the years of class action litigation. 

At the time Carl Gottlieb enacted his self-described ‘scheme’ at the WGAw regarding foreign levies the Major Studios were actually taking 100% of Americans’ foreign levies, claiming that under copyright ownership they were the ‘owner-authors’ and therefore entitled to writer’s money — actors and directors, too.  This was an obvious outrage, but WGA union or non union members were informed of this.  

Although he boasted about his success, which was not told to the membership until years afterward, Gottlieb only managed to secure 8% of the writers money. The Richert 2010 class action cut the studio’s share to 50% — even so, that is just 42% less crummy.

Neville has listed Hadl as his advisor, and I photographed Hadl with the WGA’s ‘outside’ counsel Tony Segall when Hadl appeared to be lecturing Segall after a hearing. 

A famous class action lawyer told me it was ridiculous that Neville only got 1.5 million for a case that the Hollywood Reporter said made writers 100 million while the LA Law Journal said 60 million – in any event a class action lawyer is entitled to 1/3 of recovery or 30 million at the very least. 

It was WGA expert insider-crusader Eric Hughes who first described how the case was a union/studio ‘catch and kill’ with a payoff to the class lawyers to protect the major studios and unions from future lawsuits and save billions in future judgments while keeping all the past revenue.  
I was set up as a class action bag man for American screenwriters stolen royalties in a ‘complex law’ situation where I am called a liar and  a union buster by the defendants instead of a man playing his court appointed role. But they picked the wrong guy. Now I am doing what I have to do; writers are the original whistleblowers.  I’ve managed to retain much of my anger even among the roses we grow in Portland. 
 
After the settlement  I suddenly started getting intermittent foreign royalty checks with no background information on them; I even got checks from LAW AND DISORDER which I co-wrote and produced in 1973 or so – and also THE HAPPY HOOKER, but missing were other films like WINTER KILLS and JIMMY REARDON and SUCCESS. 

In short the settlement was never enforced.  The class lawyers had quit. There was still no real accounting and the union controlled the accountants anyhow – firms like KPMG and others worked with the WGA for years. 
 
Only after the settlement did I get my first check for THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK INDIE. Except for SAG, this was a non-union picture.  It was also  a template:  evidence that the WGA was collecting for tens of thousands of nonunion films they would not admit to or disclose to the independent writers and directors until the settlement was signed and protected them. 
 
While I did get a few of the DGA checks, these should have matched and been concurrent with the WGA checks, but they were not. 
 
In 2012 Neville Johnson went to court to ask for more money to confront what he told the judge was ‘fraud’ in SAG among other things.  I wrote a long strenuous objection to Neville’s demands, saying he’d only done one or two depositions regarding the WGA – and no depositions whatsoever before he settled with DGA/SAG. 
 
Judge Wiley basically agreed with me;) that Neville owed his clients continuing representation;  (that rather incredible 2012 court transcript is attached.)  Neville said without an additional payment he would have to leave the case because his small law firm couldn’t continue without more money. 
 
After reading my brief opposing Neville Johnson/Paul Kiesel, instead of threatening to have me thrown out of court as he did in my first hearing with him, the Judge allowed me to speak for almost 5 minutes in the 2012 hearing.


However, tho the subject had recently been page one, this time Dave McNary at Variety didn’t record anything I said at this hearing;  and nobody in the press even bothered to attend our last hearing in 2014 where I told the Judge that  I – and my class – had been swindled by the union and our own lawyers.  And we were not alone; this class action touches virtually everyone who’s sold a film in Europe or South America or dozens of other countries with writer unions.


Importantly, the Australian Writers Guild did send a lawyer to that hearing, talking about how Peter Jackson and 64 other Aussie writers were owed a fortune.  But they were sent away as I was, to get another lawyer.  Never heard from them again.  


The Director of the Australian Guild once called me from Sydney and told me that Carl Gottlieb had called her very sleazy names.  She told me that she and others were threatened by the LA WGA, she said. When I asked her to repeat this out loud, I stopped hearing from her.


It is attention-grabbing if not nauseating every time I think that while certain distributors  stole 100% of the money due to me for a single film, the WGA and Columbia, Warners, Disney, Fox, Universal etc. took 92% of my foreign levies for several movies for decades – and the ‘majors’ have continued to take  50% of all writers’ money since the settlement, money intended solely and exclusively for writers and directors and actors according to European laws. 
 
Once again: The WGA and Major Studios were found in court to be rightfully guilty of swindling tens of thousands of writers for dozens of years. Yet there were almost zero depositions: none whatsoever  at the DGA or SAG. 
 
These powerhouse “Guilds” were  not prosecuted and were not required to produce the missing money. Instead, their organized union-studio theft was legalized by a not-enforced  settlement in a courtroom fraud based on false presentations or erroneous evidence given in court by members of the California Bar. 
 
This class action should be returned to the Federal courts where it began, but in a RICO venue. 


EARLIER
 
The RICHERT VS WGA case was first presented to Federal Judge Margaret M.  Morrow but moved to civil courts based on the false WGA protestation that I was a “member in arrears” at the WGA– a nonexistent member category purposefully invented to keep me under WGA control.  In fact my lawyers and the WGA all knew that I almost famously quit the guild over the Richert/Sorkin AMERICAN PRESIDENT “arbitration” and I quit paying dues in 1995.  All parties knew this, except the Judge.  So the whole case was moved to the LA Superior court because the lawyers lied to the judge.  I know it sounds absurd; we have clear evidence the court was lied to. 
 
It is preposterous on its face:  The WGA and the Major studios had nothing to do with my indie movies or your movies, or the films of thousands of others, and yet they are continuing this organized crime against American screenwriters et.al – maybe today! – without involvement or investment in making or writing or directing them — these corporate entities are collecting more money than I have made from most of my movies. 
 
Who knows how many writers and directors might have been able to survive in their chosen art form and paid their rent if they’d gotten the thousands that was withheld from them? 
 
I don’t know if you’ve gotten WGA foreign levy money with corresponding DGA checks for any of your films – since they are paid out together but I assure you that if you did get foreign levy checks, you didn’t get what was due you. 

There is no indication anywhere in this entire litigation that the major studios were ever getting a cut from the WGAw’s money for writers.
 
So here is my idea, and where it might be of interest to you economically help to represent my class of 105,000 titles + 200,000 + writers and directors and actors (including writer-lawyers.) 
 
It has now been more than 10 years since the settlement was signed into continuing fraud.   
 
We can know there was fraud because Neville Johnson told 2 judges there was fraud, and the Lead Plaintiff told 4 judges there was fraud – while during all these years as Lead Plaintiff I was thwarted or blocked in my role as lead plaintiff, while I was personally vilified and blacklisted by the WGA -- . 
 
During this entire saga I kept blowing my whistle like a factory lunch horn, and even if the artists didn’t hear,  the whistles are all documented. 
 
Except at the first filing in federal court, this billion-dollar swindle has been designated a civil and not a racketeering matter.   
 
But 10 years of fraudulent concealment by union leadership against their membership is a crime under RICO, I believe, since RICO was created partly because of union misfeasance (David Young was a teamster organizer before being beatified into the WGA as its highest-ever paid Director.  How a trucker union enforcer came to represent the lineage of James Agee et.al. should be explained by John Wells). 
 
Thus my conceivable notion: I want to sue these fraudsters  in a federal court under federal labor corruption and whistleblower laws. Ten years of a pattern of fraud and racketeering have passed. 

In the class action RICHERT VS WGA/DGA/SAG both the plaintiff and defense paid various experts to help conceal underlying wrongdoing. It is preposterous that in all these proceedings, no executive from the wGA was ever called to witness, and no mention was ever made about the actual studios who took 92% of foreign royalties intended for American artists.

It’s time the WGA leaders themselves were called to the stand on this.  Their lawyers were not called under oath to tell the whole truth, or any portion of it.
 
Whistleblowers are rewarded and protected these days.  And it’s about time somebody put some kind of Brando up against David Young’s thugs.  (You’ll excuse the Brando comparison, but you remember On The Waterfront was also about union thugs.  I have nothing against most unions, which are necessary in righteous fights against greed. However, in this instance, I have been, in all possible ways, a whistleblower against union and studio racketeering.) 
 
I MAY NOT HAVE THE NUMBERS RIGHT, BUT Since the sums involved here over several decades of deceit and money going to the studios without writers knowing amounted to an estimated 2.6 billion in almost 12 years ago.  Even then, the number was adjusted by the felons.

FROM LAW RESEARCH:  “In addition to criminal prosecutions, RICO also permits civil suits by private citizens (plaintiffs) who have suffered financial harm, whether harm to their business or damage to their property, because of racketeering. Racketeering is a genre of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, or otherwise illegal scheme (a racket) to repeatedly collect money or other profit. ... 

“The racket exists as both the problem and its solution, and it is used as a method of extortion.The RICO civil provisions contain five basic elements: injury, person, enterprise, pattern of racketeering activity, and interstate or foreign commerce.

“The defense bar’s use of RICO also threatens a principle at the core of our justice system: the right to petition the courts for redress the First Circuit has explained, “Civil RICO is an unusually potent weapon—the litigation equivalent of a thermonuclear device. The very pendency of a RICO suit can be stigmatizing and its consummation can be costly.”

Triple damages and legal fees is a consideration that might energize help in this situation.  Forensic auditors can also be engaged.
 
If you help me and our class of roughly 200,000 writers plus actors and directors behind the 105,000 titles or more the WGA is getting money for, and help US writers directors and actors file a whistleblower RICO charge, and then separately represent the entity of our class action  in a demand for enforcement of the current settlement against the union and the studios, you might profit mightily from your effort and recovery.  Plus you get attorney's fees 3X.
 
Maybe thinking a simple paragraph as an entry to a rousing RICO case against the WGA and Neville Johnson/Paul Kiesel sounds naive, but the essential charge of a continuing criminal/fraudulent enterprise via Federal RICO statutes can fit into a small paragraph on a government form.  And among my hundreds of angry pages, I think we might find dozens of small paragraphs already written to help fill in the blank if required. 
 
Another historical aspect of this is that in no law journal have I been able to find any kind of class action where the Lead Plaintiff was forced to fight both his lawyers and the defendants as being mutually corrupt. We might find a curious judge. In one phone call Neville raised my eyebrow when he asked if I thought he was colluding with Tony Segall at the WGA. 
 
A lawsuit demanding justice for a writer-director-whistleblower against the major Hollywood unions and studios – in cahoots – would draw attention to these crooks who took from thousands of unaware writers and directors and actors.  

It might finally reimburse those tens of thousands of freelancers who never joined any kind of union or ever agreed to relinquish their once and future rights included in those 105,000 titles (a number WGA lawyer Tony Segall claimed back in 2012.) 

I might add without complaining that I have only recently begun a return to health. I am nearing 79. During these courtroom years I was hospitalized for internal bleeding and later for prostate cancer. Unfortunately this led to many years of being unable to function fully under stress.  But now I am finally back in shape enough to make further last efforts in a longstanding battle against people who steal from the defenseless.  And who can defend himself/herself against something one doesn’t know exists – like theft of foreign levies. 
 
It may even be possible to trace some of these foreign levies back to the distributors and see what grosses these films made, and who might have been selling them illegally in Europe and elsewhere.  Maybe this exposure is the greater fear of the studios.
 
I realize this kind of case is not your specialty (since it is nobody’s specialty and hasn’t been tried in court to my knowledge) but the crime is organized (for sure) and continuing, and if the actual facts become known there could be tens of thousands of joiners to a new lawsuit. 
 
Much of the reporting on this case hitherto originated at the Hollywood Reporter with Jonathan Handel, a lawyer journalist who only recently admitted he was a lawyer for SAG. For years he was also a misinformant and stalwart for corruption in his REPORTER.

Under the usurpation of the possibility of a fair union representing writers’ rights, the backroom dealings of producer John Wells, treasurer Carl Gottlieb and former teamster David Young the WGA ignored its duty to original writers in favor of transactional greed, awarding credit to those insiders who could wrangle it, “credit” being the term for owned intellectual property.

The WGA enforces the copyright of any writer who signs a union agreement; they protect the studios as much as their writers.  “Credit” identifies intellectual property.  The executives in LA ought to study the international laws protecting creators of IP and the dire penalties for stealing it when caught.

I have personally discovered how US courts will not interfere in credits “assigned” by the WGA; judges say they are not literary critics or assayers.  Thus the final ownership of your work is decided by the union.  This privilege leads to plunder.

The WGA big fish thrive in the 100 days adding up to a year during a strike, but the downriver spawning is dried up.  The WGA brags that it has created “500 writer-producers” but that only means that 500 writers are now more controlled than every by their union, acting as agent and tax collector and credit arbiter collector of dues.  

Now also producers, some WGA screenwriters in NY were asked to turn in their hours while overseeing themselves.   

This is the land of Syd Field, not Dalton Trumbo; James Agee, not Carl Gottlieb.

Former President Patrick Verrone said one of the reasons for the 2007 strike was that he wanted Guild writers to be producers and entrepreneurs.

The WGA has now become the best maker of reality shows, especially now that they are insisting that reality is written too.  Look how THE APPRENTICE turned out.

The powers the WGA has given itself under their backroom conservatorship are no less grabby than the ones Britney’s father had when Britney Spears was harming herself. 

Verrone and Young made studios the enemy, even though most of the WGA leadership have lucrative producing deals with studios, and these owner-producer-writers are the only ones who could possibly benefit from the debilitating union strikes for more “shares” of a pie they mostly already own.

David Young has presided over the loss of hundreds of otherwise loyal agents to writers, many of whom really needed their agents.  In my years at WMA and ICM I observed  that “packaging” scripts with major stars, as some agents were able to do, upped the money and helped get the film made.  Apparently the WGA will now do that job themselves.  I don’t know how many stars will be glad to get scripts from the WGA.

Since the 2007 WGA strike — which diverted attention from the foreign levy case in court — thousands of freelance writers have been displaced one way or another by the “creative disruption” the WGA called a “list of demands.”  

“Spec script” deals are so infrequent that one of them got a front page in the LA Times a few years ago.  Haven’t heard much about them since.
 
Your thoughts about this will be appreciated. 

 
Thanks! 
 
All best, 
 
Cheers 
 
Bill Richert


PS.  You might note that one of Neville's law partners showed up in the 2014 transcript to say I was the only writer objecting to the settlement -- but contradicting him strongly was a lawyer for the Australian Writer's Guild representing 64 Aussie writers including Peter Jackson who went to court in support of my motions.  


PAGE 8 FROM HON.JUDGE WILEY HEARING AUGUST 22, 2012 BC339972

MR. JOHNSON: Okay. Then I'm going to be making
a motion that this court appoint counsel to come in and represent the class henceforth, which will not be me, but needs to advise you of problems and issues as they arise, because the situation that exists now is that probably a hundred million dollars a year comes into these two unions, the unions' attitude is we want to give no information
to the public, let alone our constituents here, our actual union members, as well. And that's why the court has
been supervising in the federal case the ASCAP situation
for some 60 years for issues relating to that, as well.

THE COURT: I'm happy to give you a hearing date for that motion.
MR. JOHNSON: Okay. Give it to me now, please, and we'll set a time. THE COURT: What would you like?
MR. JOHNSON: I don't know. 60 days?

Mr. Johnson never requested any such hearing; the next court hearing was called at my request and took place in 2014.

FOLLOWING WAS SENT IN 2009 JUST BEFORE I AGREED TO SIGN THE SETTLEMENT


To:  DK HOLM
  
HOW THE HOLLYWOOD SISTER UNIONS DGA, SAG AND WGA ORGANIZED NEW MEDIA AND BROUGHT THE INTERNET INTO LINE WITH THEIR OBJECTIVES TO LOCK ALL AMERICAN SCREENWRITERS INTO  THEIR JURISDICTION 
  
A VIEW FROM THE FUTURE 
  
THE PSYCHE SNATCHERS 
  
If you’re a writer who’s ever sold anything  and you got any of your work on a digital medium, chances are the WGA’s got you -- and has had you – or your money, for the past 20 years.  (Ditto if you’re an author, director or actor.) 
  
True, the Writers Guild of America shares most of that money with the major US studios, a generous act you probably never agreed to, or even heard of. 
  
Virtually all American writers and authors of screenplays books and poems made into film or television or sold as VHS or DVDs have amassed royalties in their names for decades, unbeknownst to them. 
  
Since the 1980’s films and television shows and other works based on American books and poems have been taxed throughout Europe by laws enacted to make sure the underlying artist of successful works got a piece of the action, no matter how little. 
  
Called “foreign levies,”  the WGA and DGA and SAG have been collecting these funds for years – millions and millions for writers who have nothing to do with unions -- in cahoots with the major US studios they publicly call “the enemy” – but the WGA and DGA never really admitted or got close to an accounting until they were taken into court 3 years ago by William Richert in Richert VS WGA. 
  
The thrust of the 2006 lawsuit  for Fraud at the WGA was that for at least 18 years the WGA has been collecting tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign deposits for non-union as well as union writers but never declaring the money, keeping it instead and refusing to say where it was kept, or even by whom it was kept , behind the union  
walls of silence. 
  
The WGA paid hundreds of thousands of member and insurance dollars to whistle blowers to accused high officials of misdeeds. 

The WGA will pay millions to its outside lawyers and the plaintiff’s lawyers to prevent further disclosures, using the settlement to stop any investigation.
  
But none of this effort to conceal by a corrupt union seemed to matter to the lawyers representing William Richert, who protested in letter after letter about the way the attorneys were representing Subclass 3. 
  
Subclass 3 is that group of writers – all current 12,500 WGA members and those unnamed thousands of non-union screenwriters, novelists, biographers, political writers, poets and others for whom the WGA has been holding and collecting money. 

The future will reveal these misdeeds.
  
​

DESK OF WILLIAM RICHERT
LEAD PLAINTIFF
“IN PRO PER”
WILLIAM RICHERT V. WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, WEST, INC. et. al.

www.williamrichert@williamrichert.com

WILLIAM RICHERT DISMISSES LAWYERS NEVILLE JOHNSON AND PAUL KIESEL FROM WRITERS’ CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

- FROM COURT TRANSCRIPT JUDGE WILEY JR. LA SUPERIOR COURT HEARING MAY 16, 2012:

     THE COURT:  “I'm directing the court reporter to repeat my remarks. It's not common in CCW that we actually have an issue of courtroom control. It's supposed to be the palace of reason and -- .”

     MR. RICHERT: “ -- Well, in this case, it could be the dungeon of a certain kind of insanity, Your Honor, and it's very deeply within the vaults of these three unions…”

- FROM COURT TRANSCRIPT, JUDGE WILEY JR. HEARING AUGUST 22, 2012:

     NEVILLE JOHNSON:  “There’s no lawyer representing the constituency, the class action...”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA

May 10, 2014

LA attorneys Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel have been dismissed from the class-action lawsuit WILLIAM RICHERT V. THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA pending court approval of substitution of attorney in a class action, according to lead plaintiff William Richert.

Mr. Richert has been in LA Superior Court as the class representative for the writers of 105,000 film/video titles in his class along with others throughout the world who are unaware they are represented in the settlement, with litigation starting in September, 2005.

“In firing Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel” I am following congressional mandate for the duties and obligations of the Lead Plaintiff in a class action,” says Mr. Richert.

“I’m taking action after almost two years of the conspicuously absent settlement enforcement by Messrs. Johnson and Kiesel, along with the blatant contempt the WGA has shown for the settlement for the writers class, and the negligent existence of the foreign levy agreements for SAG and the DGA non-union directors.

Placing the announcement on his Facebook page for the writers, actors and directors governed by the class actions, which allow the WGAw to function as a collection society, Mr. Richert asks the artists and journalists following the story to examine and check out the U.S. Court of Appeals decisions about class actions, and the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, so they can become aware of the many rights they have.

Mr. Richert states that it is extremely difficult to undo a negotiated class action lawsuit involving deep-pocket unions or corporations – look at the asbestos class action for years of disputes – but a settlement can be vigorously enforced to the benefit of the class.

“For enforcement we need a lawyer to interpret the clauses to the court, since judges are not cops or investigators.  They can only work with what they are given, basically, and they have to trust the lawyers.  Of course, 50% of the time they might be lied to.  Very rarely are all the lawyers lying 100% of the time, as appears to have happened in these cases.”

Saying he’s just discovered his “settlement class” may include Guilds across the European Union and Australia, Mr. Richert continues:

“Only last week I looked at the WGAw settlement again and saw that the tiny phrase ‘U.S.’ had been removed from the earlier class definition of screenwriters and authors who are purported to be controlled by my lawsuit.  This was brought to my attention by a leader in another country’s writers guild.

“That change means my class definition now includes ‘all writers, including members of the WGAw and most importantly, non-members of the WGAw.

“‘Non members of the WGAw’ would mean most of the planet.  I have been told that the WGAw is also collecting royalties for the European Union and the Australian Writers Guild, which I didn’t know, and the WGAw didn’t admit.  I hadn’t looked at this phrase in a long time, and never noticed that the ‘U.S.’ was missing.

“I looked at the Amended settlement once again because an official of a Writer’s Guild in another country told me that the WGAw settlement was being used to block royalties in Guilds across the European Union – Germany, France, Italy and especially Spain.  An international commission of Writers Guilds is preparing to contest the settlement as a whole.

“I object to this ongoing outrageous conduct by the WGAw Officers and Board of Directors under the settlement’s use of my name and class.

“Carl Gottlieb, Secretary-Treasurer, recently sent me a check for $1,300 in foreign royalties for a movie that the WGAw had no contract for, and for which the original amount was upwards of $12,000 before the WGAw split with the studios.

“Amounts owed to me alone, and I’m a slim earner in the Hollywood system, could be in the hundreds of thousands, with only a fraction accounted for.

“Not only is the RICHERT VS WGAw settlement being used against writers throughout the world,  but the SAG settlement negotiated by Messrs. Johnson & Kiesel was the core basis of dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Sunny Wise in the Federal court on behalf of Eric Hughes, Ed Asner, Clancy Brown, Dennis Hayden and others, including me.

“The benefits to the classes as defined and created by these 3 lawsuits are grossly derogatory to the classes, are the opposite of fair and reasonable, and the economic, performance and copyrights that the actors, writers and directors possessed under law before the settlements were enacted have been lost to all. 

“The settlement themselves are instruments of fraud.

“The union management and Boards of Directors continue to pay gargantuan fees from the members’ funds to lawyers to protect them and their profiteering secret conniving methods,” Mr. Richert says.

THE LAWYER THREATENS THE CLASSES HE REPRESENTS, THEN QUITS

“Something really, really, really bad,” will happen to his clients if he were not paid more money, Neville Johnson told the court of Judge Wiley Jr., with actors Tom Bower and Dennis Hayden in the Gallery.

“The lawyers were deficient,” Mr. Johnson boldly added, knowing he was referring to himself and Mr. Kiesel.  Judge Wiley Jr. agreed.

Deficiency is the opposite of what these class action lawsuits are meant to achieve, Mr. Richert asserts, and under law, class action clients are not supposed to suffer a net loss.

The lawyers for the actors – Dan Schecter, Duncan Crabtree Ireland, Bob Bush – and their respective law firms and consultants like EEG – actually paid themselves legal fees and bonuses totaling way more than the $8 million they claim was paid to the actors, without showing any actual accounting, which remains under court seal due to inaction of Neville Johnson, according to Mr. Richert.

Under the direction of David White for SAG and David Young and Carl Gottlieb for the WGAw, with Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel negligent for all three “sister” guild lawsuits, and them all guided by Robert Hadl for himself and the studios, with compliance from Joe Roth at the DGA; the rights of artists world wide have been reduced to a fraction of true value, and attempts to correct the injustice have been blocked in the courts and ignored in the press.

“At one point I asked to be removed from the case and demanded that my name be taken off.  After a meeting in the hallway with Mr. Johnson, I went back into the courtroom and heard Judge West accept my offer.  Then on the way out Mr. Johnson leaned over and loudly asked our opponent, Ms. Emma Leheny for the WGAw, if she could supply a new writer as plaintiff.  When she said, “Yes, I think I can,” while the Judge pretended to be looking through schedules, I knew I would not be able to withdraw and leave that case to the lawyers and the union writers at he WGAw.  So I went back into court and my role, and have stayed ever since.”

Mr. Richert noted that one Executive Director of a foreign guild, who wishes to remain anonymous because of fear of WGAw retaliation, said that a single accounting of interest-only from a tiny group of writers whose royalties were taken by the WGAw amounts to $200,000 – again, that is interest alone.

The amounts due American non-union writers are unknown, but could add up to $500 million or more, and that does not include what is due European writers.

There is no evidence that any of the classes were “adequately represented” in the lawsuit, the key to legitimacy of a class action according to U.C.L.A. professor William B. Rubenstein.

“Our challenge to the medusa heads of the sister-unions in Hollywood, and their major studio overlord partners, is just beginning now that the time limit has passed for compliance at the WGA.  I am in discussions with one of the greatest class action lawyers in the known Universe, as they say in Hollywood.

“Once we get approval from Judge Wiley that hiring a real lawyer to represent the class is court approved, we can contract and announce our new class action lawyer.

“Neville Johnson’s promise that something ‘really really really’ bad” will happen to all of us clients if Judge Wiley did not pay him additional fees to represent the classes,  could  become a rallying cry for film artists across the world – against clandestine union activities against folks the union has no business representing under any circumstances.  Ultimately, these are copyright issues and performance right issues thwarted by settlements the unions misrepresented to their members .

“What Mr. Johnson hasn’t reckoned with are the non union not-for-hire writers like me who don’t care a fig about their holy crony vows.”

WGA COLLECTION SOCIETY NOT A LEGAL ENTERPRISE IN A PUBLIC CORPORATION

According to Mr. Richert:  In true Verroneian WGA-double-speak, after 60 years the  union managed to victoriously upend the dreaded deadly anti-human anti-writer “Hollywood Blacklist,” of the 1950s, a crime against freedoms of all kinds, including freedom of speech engineered by crusading anti-Red evangalesists supported by the Writer’s Guild of America and the Hollywood Reporter, among other lynchers of freedom of speech and writing.

“Some say that the WGA 2007 marching crusade ‘Pencils Down’ was a rewrite of that era, stopping writers from telling the truth by labeling them traitors. 

“However, ‘Pencils Up!!’ is the motto of the writers I grew up with, and emulated.

“Like other Verroneian reversals of truth and fact, in 2005 the WGA co-authored the creation of a brand new incarnation of THE BLACK LIST, reinvented as an index of the best screenplays in Hollywood.  Now when anybody says ‘Black List,’ it means the opposite of what it once did, as they re-created my lawsuit for fraud as ‘the highly successful foreign levy program.’”

[check WGA website wga.org.  WGA ex-president and Board Member Patric Verrone is now running for public office from Pacific Palisades, where his union once distributed threatening leaflets about a cable television executive.  Mr. Verrone is running on “I won the strike” platform, which continues his revisionist campaigns, as the strike was a net loss to writers in LA of up to 75% and the jobs are still moving away from LA.]

Look further on wga.org at the WGAw “Audit” to see the single-page accounting for foreign levies – now almost $180 million -- what is actually a number like $1.4 Billion for an unknown number of writers – unknown, and still unaccounted for.

“Using the same obfuscation-grammar zero-sum response legal-sleaze techniques to deceive, David Young and Daniel Pietrie Jr. both wrote devoted, passionate letters to the entire 2009 WGA membership – which basically means all of the movers in Hollywood, producers writers and directors – denouncing the allegations I made before the settlement without mentioning them, using in the letters a kind of old-style organizer malevolence, all directed at the named plaintiff, William Richert.

“These letters, approved by Counsel and the Board of Directors, were only propaganda for the settlement the writers were meant to sign, relinquishing their copyrights 92 percent to the major studios; like saying: this is good for you, fellows/ladies!  That bad man Billy Richert was saying mean things about us Hollywood writers, and he should be scorned.

“Since there are so many innocents involved here, and the futures of independent writers, directors, actors and filmmakers are at stake, this long festering case grants unions and studios vast impact across all media, from the theatrical screens to the home screens connecting across the internet, stretching far into the future from deep into the past” says Mr. Richert.

 “I only recently got a check for my movie LAW AND DISORDER, non union, made in the early 1970s.

“In addition to absconding with copyrights and royalties for writers worldwide, the personal slurs against me made publicly to the WGAw members by Patric Verrone, Daniel Petrie Jr. and Carl Gottlieb and David Young will be answered duly in time and with the proper lawful response.  A union attacking a nonmember (or members) for performing public-interest whistle-blower functions is an actionable Federal offense.

“Corruption didn’t start in Hollywood, it only seems to wind up here,” says Mr. Richert, “like in the proverb:  ‘When Jesus is Near, can the Devil be far behind?’”

INFORMATION AND CONTACT

RICHERT VS WGAW

www.williamrichert@williamrichert.com

FURTHER CONTACTS TBA

]]>Sun, 04 May 2014 00:19:09 GMThttp://williamrichert.com/richert-v-wgaw/william-richert-v-writers-guild-of-america-west-inc

THE FOLLOWING MOTIONS WERE FILED AT THE LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT ON APRIL 10, 2014:




WILLIAM RICHERT

LEAD PLAINTIFF/PETITIONER

2757 Overland Avenue

Los Angeles, California 90064

Telephone: 310.453.8415

Email: richertwilliam@mac.com

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

IN PRO PER

WILLIAM RICHERT, an individual, PEARL RETCHIN, an individual, and on behalf of those similarly situated,

                           Plaintiff,

vs.

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA WEST, INCL. FIDUCIARYS et.al.,

                           Defendant

 Case No.: BC339972, related cases BC3521; and Osmond V. Screen Actor’s Guild, Inc, LASC Case No.: BC377780

 

HONORABLE JOHN SHEPARD WILEY JR.


PLAINTIFF NOTICE OF MOTIONS 1) MOTION TO SUBSITUTE ADEQUATE ATTORNEY FOR NEVILLE JOHNSON; 2.) MOTION FOR COURT REVIEW/APPROVAL OF WGA GIFT OF $1 MILLION TO ACTOR’S FUND; 3.)MOTION TO AUDIT PLAINTIFF’S ROYALTIES PER SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT AND: 4.) MOTION TO REJOIN SAG AND DGA RELATED CASES IN EQUAL FAIRNESS TO SAG ACTORS AND NON-UNION DIRECTORS; MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT THEREOF INCL. EXHIBITS

HEARING REQUESTED
DEPT: CCW 311

LEAD PLAINTIFF WILLIAM RICHERT, ON BEHALF OF HIS CLASS, RESPECTFULLY MAKES THE FOLLOWING MOTIONS TO THE HONORABLE JOHN SHEPARD WILEY JR.:

1.) MOTION TO REPLACE U.S. WRITERS’ CLASS ATTORNEY. According to the civil class-action rules (23), the class must have lawyer.  Judge Wiley recognized this in his reply to Mr. Johnson’s courtroom assertion on August 22, 2012:  

FROM COURT TRANSCRIPT AUGUST 2012:

MR. JOHNSON:  OKAY.  Then other counsel may come in, I take it, and they can enforce.  You don’t have a problem with that, right?

 

THE COURT:  I’ll rule on an issue when it’s presented to me.

 

…MR. JOHNSON:  Okay.  Then I am going to be making a motion that this court appoint counsel to come in and represent the class henceforth, which will not be me, but needs to advise you of problems and issues as they arise...

 

THE COURT:  I will be happy to give you a hearing date for that motion.

 

But no motion was forthcoming from Mr. Johnson in response to the Judge Wiley’s offer, either that day when Mr. Johnson quickly changed the subject, nor in the many months since that hearing.  I am making that crucial motion today on behalf of my class.

Based on a 2014 threshold settlement deadline, with knowledge of new infractions and contempt for the settlement by the non-compliant defendant WGA, I ask the court to accept Mr. Johnson’s resignation ipso facto and to appoint the needed new counsel ASAP.  (see attached dismissal notice to Neville Johnson.)

Moreover, a new lawyer can advise the court with notice that the case is now “ripe” for enforcement based on the expiration of the WGA’s 3-year contract “grace” period for “full payment” to America’s film and television and book authors. – Especially the writers who belong to no union, have not been adequately represented, but are now being made subject to WGA-AFL-CIO “jurisdiction” as a result of my settlement.  There is presently no person at all in court to represent U.S. freelance screenwriters and authors but me.  -- But there will be others.

If it pleases the court, I will continue in my dual role as plaintiff/pro se petitioner, acting as “citizens attorney general,” while awaiting the Your Honor’s approval and the hire of a new lawyer.

2.) MOTION FOR “FULL ACCOUNTING” OF WRITER ROYALTIES “SINCE INCEPTION” as required by settlement after the “effective date.” 

The March, 2014 foreign levy copyright check made out to me for $1,384.46 the union A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON and the not-union THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK  – offers the first actual/actionable evidence that the union took royalties from non-union authors for a period over twenty years.  According to the German Foreign Levy contract signed by the unions and studios (attached), the true amount on this 2014 check should be around $12,600, and I'm a small earner in Hollywood.  The check is also missing royalties from the years 1999-2011.

Showing the WGA has been taking money from a non-union film, the WGA check fails to include any explanation for decades of other, perhaps much larger, missing royalties for movies like THE HAPPY HOOKER and WINTER KILLS and LAW and DISORDER and A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON along with THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. It does not indicate whether any money was given to Universal, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Columbia, Fox, United Artists or Warner Brothers, though we know that 92.5% of it was. (Signed WGA/Studio "Agreement" exhibit attached)

As told to me by Judge West and Judge Highberger and court moderator Paul Kiesel, my royalty checks as Lead Plaintiff represent those for all class members, showing what we got -- or did not get. THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK royalties are as unaccounted for today as they were when the lawsuit was filed in 2005, with these post-settlement checks raising more questions than answers.  IRON MASK is due royalties from all three unions, WGA, SAG and DGA – as well as non-unions. -- Collecting money intended for others does not make any institution a collection society, except maybe in the characters in the SOPRANOS, written by class member David Saul. 

This year the WGA claims to have collected a total of $157 million "since inception" for writers in foreign levies.  The true amount is closer to $1.570 BILLION received for U.S. writers since 1992, and that number does not includes the decades earlier  The WGA says it has now accounted for all this money, but refuses to say where the other 92.5 per cent went.  The lawsuit provides an avenue for discovery of that.

 3.) MOTION FOR COURT APPROVAL TO REOPEN, REVIEW IN COURT THE “CY PRES” DONATION OF ONE MILLION DOLLARS TO THE ACTORS’ FUND, WITH HEARING TO DETERMINE HOW THE ‘CY PRES FUND’ WAS CREATED AND HOW THE ESTIMATED 1 MILLION WAS ARRIVED AT.

The donation of U.S. writer’s “undeliverable funds” in the amount of 1 million dollars was unlawfully made by to the Actor’s Fund without court knowledge, approval or jurisdiction, as mandated by the settlement. 

Judge West was very clear he wanted to see the “undeliverable” funds before they were given to any charity, or before they were given to the State of California, where Judge West thought they belonged.  When the case was transferred to Judge Wiley, both sides of lawyers withheld -- and therefore obfuscated – crucial information about the Court’s right to review any donation or escheat, and made impossible any desire by the Court to examine the donation in view of vastly conflicting accountings of the amount in question. (see Amended Settlement, and decl. by William Richert)

 

4.) MOTION FOR RE-JOINING OF DGA, SAG AND WGA CASES so that the non-WGA settlements grant the members of the Actors and Directors’ unions the same rights to follow their money as were given to the writers under the RICHERT VS. WGA settlement.

In 2005 The WGA lawyers told the Federal court that they control the copyrights of U.S. writers in the same way that safety rules for retail clerks who were unionized were extended to non-union retail clerks.  American writers respect and frequent retail clerks, and ask for the same sharing of rights between all unions formerly connected to the BC339972 WGA lawsuit to protect all those involved in these lawsuits equally.

Under Section 301 Unions legally extend their health and safety awards to include the non-union general population when health or other rights are involved, and here are two unions – DGA and SAG --which have “settled” the trademarks of actors names and performances as belonging to their lawyers and SAG-DGA Executive Directors first, members or non-union-members come second. We believe the rights granted to writers uniquely in the RICHERT VS. WGAw settlement should be extended to those union and non-union DGA and SAG members whose settlements were “deficient” according to both Judge Wiley and Neville Johnson and the consultants involved.

Flowing into the digital epoch, we understand that millions of artists will soon be involved in these issues, as millions post internet videos each day, many of which the unions claim fall under their jurisdiction.

The settlements with the DGA and SAG in particular are abhorrent to the artists who understand the loss of rights under the disingenuous deals made by Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel on their behalf.  Unlike the WGA lawsuit, the DGA and SAG were settled “with prejudice,” concrete evidence of the absolute disregard shown by the contingency lawyers to their clients.  Non-union Actors and directors should not suffer under a “deficient” mandate when unions claim rights to protect their members under civil rule 301. 

If SAG and the DGA will not protect those thousands indentured by bad settlements made by profiteering lawyers, we, the writers’ class plaintiffs’ in the WGA case, plead that these cases return to their lawful genesis – all have the same lawyers – and we ask that whoever continues the post-settlement enforcement return to the original 2005 William Richert claim for justice for all.  Neville Johnson says 50 million a year goes through the DGA for non-union members – which means that really half a billion sent was sent for them. 

200 Million was the figure Mr. Johnson and Mr. Segall agreed in court was due to WGA members and non-members.   This does not include the 92.5% to the Studios.

DECLARATION OF WILLIAM RICHERT: POINTS, FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS 2005-2014:

On August 22, 2012, after challenging Judge Wiley over his demand for additional fees the lawyer for the three major Hollywood "labor" unions,  -- Neville Johnson -- walked off from the class action cases he filed and hasn’t returned.  It is the duty of the Lead Plaintiff to replace him, and we respectfully ask the court to ensure that the rights of the court-certified litigant are protected post-settlement.

This class action is especially important to the film world as it involves thousands of non-union independent screenwriters who often devote their lives to a single film, and should not see their royalties taken by unions or studios, as has been done for decades without any accounting.

Concerning my own years since 2005 as both witness and plaintiff representing non-union writers:  I can verifiably state that almost every word presented to the Honorable Judges Morrow, Carl J. West, William Highberger, and now yourself, Hon. Judge John Wiley Jr. – has been has been false, as in fellow class member Mary McCarthy’s (deceased) observation about fellow class member Lillian Hellman (deceased), who founded the Writers Guild of America:  “every word she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘but.’”

It is said that the Devil’s biggest fraud is his ability to convince the gullible that he doesn’t exist, or that his counsel is in the best interest of the hopeful, i.e. “Usual Suspects” written by class member Christopher McQuarrie.

Starting September, 2005, I’ve been the class writer and witness to devilish deeds and intentions in three courts, and I know the details.  2005 was the year the WGA Board voted to place all “cy pres” or undeliverable funds into the treasury.  No Judge was ever told this, even though the courts had full jurisdiction over the “cy pres” money, which Tony Segall gave in 2012 to the Actor’s Fund, never acknowledging a deception that no doubt included other unaccounted-for funds.

One example of a gang of lawyers’ devious and subtle fabrication was presented in 2012 to the court of Judge Wiley by Tony Segall, Daniel Schecter and my class lawyers, Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesl with Studio Exec. – Labor Counsel Robert Hadl uber-lawyering to them all from the visitor’s gallery.

Uncorrected by any of the informed lawyers present in the room, Neville Johnson asserted that that the entire lawsuit is about Hollywood’s “industry governance” as if it were merely an insider fraternal dispute about supervision of a standard process.

NEVILLE JOHNSON:  “THIS LAWSUIT CHALLENGED THE ADEQUACY OF WGA’S COLLECTION, PROCESSING AND DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN LEVIES TO WRITERS, INCLUDING WGA MEMBERS AS WELL AS NON-MEMBERS.”

Actually, what RICHERT VS. WGA is really about is theft of copyright; theft of royalties;  an ongoing scheme outside any kind of writer-approved union/studio deal lasting a quarter century and counting; a pernicious union/studio criminal piracy enterprise involving billions of dollars.

Tony Segall, Patric Verrone, David Young, Carl Gottlieb et. al, denied any wrongdoing or prior knowledge, of course, along with the Board of Directors at the WGA, but this is the shield an expensive settlement can provide, offering the defendants a temporary stay from the inevitable march of justice. 

Although Neville Johnson left the courtroom in a huff, as if he were the loser, that was part of the plan:  to the class members, it appears the courts had washed its hands of the lawsuits, creating a kind of writers’ Pontius Pilot of the Judge.

And while Dan and Tony gave each other “high fives” exiting the court, they were not excluding Neville in their crony exultation;  after all, they paid him 1.6 million for four hours of depositions, along with his downtown parking fees.

To those labor union attorneys who were over the moon with their success, the non-union freelance writers nationwide say "not so fast" --  there are still “victories” in the settlement, as Judge Wiley said, and they need to be taken -- especially for non-union writers.

While the Richert VS. WGA settlement may have given up the distribution of 7 and 1/2 % of U.S. foreign royalties, along with U.S. copyright protections, to the aegis of WGA, I signed the settlement along with objector Eric Hughes specifically for a “full payout” and in return for a clause allowing a collateral lawsuit for the identification and location of the rest of the money, thus leading to action to reclaim the 92% of those royalties hitherto given by the union to the studios in secret, plus interest.

That studio grab exceeds one billion dollars.  Nobody knows how much belongs to non union authors and screenwriters.

The settlement I signed also binds 20 thousand WGA union writers to a deal hardly any ever read or knew about.   

Before any member got the settlement offer, official messages from the WGA to its membership described the settlement as “inaccurate” and the settlement itself that was made out to be “court approved,” as sent to the members to imply it was good and anyhow already irreversible, favoring the union.  [The WGA also said I was a member EMERITUS IN ARREARS, a made-up category – until after settlement was signed, when they suddenly declared I was a “non-member” -- all false and misleading.  Even today, very few union members know that they only get 7.5% of their full due.  And I’ll bet almost none of the majority non-union screenwriters have any notion at all of money taken from them. For a long time I felt that the WGA membership had behaved in a cowardly manner, with virtually none offering to help in the case, THEIR case; then I read what the union leadership sent out to the membership, and saw they were not cowards at all, but victims.]

My recent $1,387.46 WGA royalty check – signed by Carl Gottlieb -- should have been the full $12,000 that the collection societies originally sent in my name, for example (as I calculate the total including the other 92.5% the WGA gave to the studios.)  This amount comes nowhere near what is owed for other films that were collected for me over the years since THE HAPPY HOOKER (non WGA.)

More commercially successful writers are owed much more.

The WILLIAM RICHERT VERSUS THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA settlement was not designed to inexplicably and secretly give 92% of writers’ royalties to the studios (or 85 or even 50 percent as the union presently claims) -- in perpetuity, or “forever” -- which is what happened to my royalties for ‘THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK” along with my other movies [though not ‘forever’ we vow.]

Considering the stakes of copyright and performance rights extinguished/controlled by a small group of insiders, involving billions, it is amazing to me that so little has been written in the LA press about this matter.  But then I have heard that the WGA intimidates those who do write about it.

The major Hollywood studios have no rights whatsoever to any claim of royalties generated by private copyrighted property like THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, which was defiantly non-WGA and non-DGA and certainly not done under any “work for hire” studio “pre-nuptials” or CBA/MBA union regulations. 

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, via this lawsuit, becomes an index of connected  information on the unions, studios and collecting societies themselves.

Taking royalties from this privately financed independent film is the same kind of piracy that the studios and unions decry; here it’s them doing it first. I used my money and the money of my friends to produce this movie, which took almost a decade to make and distribute, and the first real money to be returned to us -- however small – shall not be taken by others without accounting for it

FRAUD AT INCEPTION

While this year, in 2014,  the WGA continues to misrepresent the facts of the lawsuit, even excluding Mexico from its list of collecting countries, while continue defame the lead plaintiff,  WGA lawyer Emma Leheny outright lied at the outset to Judge Morrow in the Federal court in 2007, from whence the falsehoods flowed into the other courts.  She soon mysteriously disappeared from the lawsuit --  .

FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE MORROW TRANSCRIPT FEBRUARY 5, 2007:

THE COURT:  But these plaintiffs aren’t members of these labor unions, are they?

MS. LEHENY: That’s incorrect. it is our position that Mr. Richert, the lead plaintiff in the Writers Guild case, is and was a member of the writers Guild. I would also ask that attention be redirected to what we believe is the correct analysis, whether work is produced pursuant to a Collective Bargaining Agreement, not whether an individual voluntarily chooses to be a dues paying member of a union. In other words, when I sign on to write a film and 14 it is under the writers Guild agreement –

THE COURT: You know, let me just interrupt you here…as the court understands the allegations of the complaint, the allegations of the complaint are that these two individuals are not members of the two unions… But they are not performing this work pursuant to a Collective Bargaining Agreement. They have a right that arose under foreign law based on work they did as nonunion members.

So how does that implicate the Collective Bargaining Agreement, or not the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but this voluntary settlement effectively that the Guild's entered into with the companies? It's like you sort of arrogated to yourself the right and the power to make deals on behalf of these plaintiffs who say that they are not members of your unions.

MS. LEHENY: Okay. It is a fact that Mr. Richert's films that were at issue here were produced under the Writers Guild contract.

The above is totally FALSE, and is a blatant deceit to the Judge and she knows it and all the lawyers appearing in front of the Judge know it, too.  I was not told of the Federal Court hearing or invited to attend, otherwise I would have protested that day as I did later on. 

WGA CFO Don Gor continued the deception both in his deposition and in his court declaration:  "William Richert is now and has always been during the course of this lawsuit a member of the WGA."

AFTER THE SETTLEMENT, THE WGA RETRACTS THE RUSE IT USED TO CONTROL ITS MEMBERSHIP:

“The lawsuit was filed in 2005 by a non-member.”  States www.wga.org. 2014-- CHRIS HEYSER.

Ms. Leheny lied in 2007 in front of the court and in front of the complicit lawyers about my membership and other issues. In possession of my files, she knew that only a few of my films were produced under the WGA contract, and none originated under a studio contract.  The majority of my negatives are private property, and copyrighted.  Ms. Leheny also told the court I was a MEMBER “EMERITUS IN ARREARS,” a name I rather puckishly enjoy, but which is as misleading since there is no such category and WGA expert Eric Hughes has the documents to prove it. (Besides, Emeritus members do not pay dues).  These statements were as bogus as all else the lawyers from both sides have told the courts all these years.  Ms. Leheny (who now works for the teachers’ union) goes on to state:

MS. LEHENY:  Here the plaintiff’s claims are squarely addressed by the foreign levy agreement, which is the applicable labor contract.

Ms. Leheny refers to a “labor contract” which is clearly and definitively NOT a factual description of the secret foreign levy “agreement” which says the exact opposite – declaring that the entire agreement is “Outside Collective Bargaining.”  The 1990 “Secret Agreement” shows that is not true.

Then, in that same initial hearing, Dan Schecter chimes in with a set of lies of his own:

MR. SCHECTER:  These unions over a course of years at great expense negotiated with management, negotiated with the foreign jurisdictions that were collecting the moneys and now they hold money as a consequence of that, both for the membership and non-members.  So to assess whether they acted wrongfully, you need to look at Section 3 of the foreign levy agreement.

Actually, the Judge needed to look at section “6”, of the agreement, not “3.”  Mr. Schecter was counting on a Federal Judge being too busy to know all the provisions of a “unique” small typeface 1990 secret deal.

MR. SCHECTER:  It is only through the Guild’s exercise of the collective bargaining authority and the collective bargaining role that they go out and they make claims on behalf of the author’s share. Wha? -- Nonsense, this is, and it has been perpetuated as the “gravitas” of this case through 3 judges and nine years of litigation; all under the Cromwellian Thumb of a former lawyer for Lew Wasserman, Robert Hadl.

MR. SHECTER:  It gets pretty thorny.  Not even the plaintiffs submit that the first day that a dollar comes in it has to be paid out.  There’s some period of time that’s its reasonable for any entity that reviews millions of dollars to figure out who it’s for.

17 YEARS of “figuring out” at the time of this hearing?  Now it’s been 24 years, and there is still no accounting of any non-member’s checks at any of these unions except the checks I have got.

Boy oh boy, this may not belong in a legal motion, but here is B.S. at its most stench-full – and I have a catalogue of this artful dodger’s whoppers dropped in three different courts – again, Mr. Schecter knows that it’s actually 3 different unions taking foreign levies , not two –  since Mr. Schechter has already been representing SAG’s foreign levies – and he also knows that there is no “collective bargaining” in this case, especially for non-union writers who do not “bargain” their copyrights away without knowing it, and whose copyrights cannot be legally taken that way, either.

[It is bizarre also to read testimony about “workplace rules” and “rates of pay” for writers like me; nothing like these conditions have ever applied to me or my peers.]

WHAT THE JUDGE COULD NOT KNOW

No lawyer in the courtroom told Judge Wiley the SAG contract had expired, or that the “cy pres” was meant to be given by the Judge and Court; not the lawyers involved in the case; preposterously, nobody talked about the WGA Board giving the WGA treasurer control of foreign levies "cy press" way back in 2005.  ...Was that because of my lawsuit?

Neville Johnson to Judge Wiley, May 16, 2012: “I will say that we are pleased to say that the WGA has been cooperating with our consultants and they are in the process of finalizing a press release and getting certain moneys paid out to a charity in accordance with the terms of the settlement…

Please note that Mr. Johnson makes no mention of “cy pres” at this hearing, or the next hearing.  But note also that the WGA wrote a press release and made a big show of giving 1 million to the actor’s fund that should have been done by the court, not the lawyers:

From Amended Settlement, Judge West, 2011:   “In addition to the provisions in paragraph 7(d) of the Amended Settlement Agreement relating to the payment of certain un- distributable funds attributable to non-covered works, the court shall retain jurisdiction over any undistributable funds attributable to works written under any WGAW collective bargaining agreement, including the applicability, if any, of the California Unclaimed Property law. code Civ.. Proc.  PR OC. 1500 – 1582, or the payment of such funds to a cy pres recipient

[How did this CY PRES amount come to be one million or 1/157th million of the total foreign levy amount when for years the lawyers told the judges that delays in sending foreign levies were because of computer problems or missing names – yet this One Mil is less than one half of one percent of the “distributed” money of 157 million – or was that money really distributed?  What about the tens of thousands of checks that were shredded according to WGA employees? This is nowhere reflected in the audit. Where are the rest of my  checks for non-union films, taken without my knowing?  Can THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK have gotten foreign levies only starting 2012 after 11 years in the marketplace?  What about the checks from 1974?  -- And if all money has been accounted for, where is it?  This is WGA-Gibberish accounting.  The WGA hired the accounting firm KPMG as defendants hiring their own cover-up, and the class consultant Don Jasko made his own separate deal with Don Gor, the Chief Financial Officer at the WGA.  How can these relationships not be espied as consensual fraud?]

My recent checks from the WGA for “IRON MASK” are notably the first and only royalties I have received in the 15 years the guild has been accepting them for my films.  (They’ve collected on LAW AND DISORDER since 1974; THE HAPPY HOOKER  shortly thereafter.)

After nine years of litigation and numberless requests, these Carl Gottlieb checks are the first-ever evidence the WGA was taking money of non-union members and not accounting for it .  -- And they are not accounting for the total “in full” as demanded by the settlement.

Not only are the foreign levy accountings nonexistent, but also the overall audit “numbers” do not add up in any consistent way, which is not good for numbers.

NUMBERS IN WHIPLASH:  In 2010 Tony Segall said the WGA had a sum of $25.30 million “due to members.”  But then suddenly, in 2011, it says it paid out $104 million to 9000 writers; but wait -- in 2013 that number rises to 157 million “collected” – hold on: back in 2004 the union was only holding 230,000 for members in residuals/foreign levies – except that number jumped to 4 million in 2004 and then in 2005 the WGA was saying that “funds held in trust for members and Undeliverable funds” totaled around $24 million in the unions “trust” accounts.

Perplexingly, these low foreign levy numbers were from those giddy profitable pre-strike years prior to 2007, which were the high earning years for writer DVD sales, before there were no more good movies to sell DVDs partly due to the strike.

At the wga.org there is no accounting whatsoever for any of the money the non-profit WGAw accepted for non-union writers and split with the studios.

For U.S. authors and screenwriters who do not want to work or create under labor union jurisdiction, this scenario is closer in movie lingo to 12 YEARS AS A SLAVE than NORMA RAE.  The unions portray these royalties to the court as if they were taken from the studios and given to the writers -- but the very opposite is true.  These billions were diverted carefully by the WGA  from both the non-union writers to the coffers of the union and the studios via the offices of Don Gor at the WGAw under the direction of Robert Hadl and Carl Gottlieb, among others.

If you look at the publications the WGA chose to inform America’s non-union freelance screenwriters about a pro-union class action settlement – it’s laughable, with a satiric ha-ha for the 90,000 –plus freelance writers the WGA took money for – then didn’t pay out.  There is a criminal category for this behavior that the settlement narrowly avoided in favor of the union; till now.

The ads meant to inform America’s screenwriters about their class action lawsuit were placed for any eye-blink in VARIETY – how many free or “free lance” writers read this Hollywood insider paper? -- Also the controlled settlement notice went to “Written-by” – which is a WGA union-only publication that freelancers have no real access to whatsoever. Now then, how about U.S. writers looking at “UKDAILY” for a settlement notice about their money?  This kind of duplicitous dealing may not be contempt of court, but it is contempt for writers, and the plaintiff class.

Further, and alarming: as America’s writers get checks from the WGAw, they are becoming “data” within the union’s memory banks and the studios it consorts with.  This is antithetical to the freedom of writers in general from invasive practices.

It is an outrage of unknown proportions that union/studio accountants and lawyers have taken and divided millions of dollars from non-union writers in almost every state of the union.  It may have been explicable for them to do so after first making their deal with the studios in 1990-- but fifteen years of concealment and obfuscation and check shredding means stealing, not finding.

I am the last man standing in this lawsuit to represent the unrepresented freelance screenwriters and authors in the U.S. and it is my duty to seek adequate counsel, strategic helpers, and to alert writers about a massive secret union jurisdictional grab, and to the fact we are now and will in the limitless digital future be on union studio databases with personal and IRS and professional information they have no legal rights to -- except by the protecting dictates of this settlement, which is not being enforced.

Like thousands of others in my class of writers, I have other films to make, non-union as well as union. If this settlement is legally enforced within its four walls of deliberation and costly adjudication, and we exercise our rights to sue the unions and studios for splitting the money to begin with, in the future no studio shall have the right to take our royalties without our knowledge and consent.  The nearly decade long ordeal that resulted in these class settlements are not like a Seinfeld episode -- about “nothing.” But to represent our rights within the settlement, it’s essential that the class have a lawyer who is “super” [not a super lawyer, an internet accolade which is for sale] -- a classy class lawyer, who speaks in the language of the courts and the law.(Seinfeld writers are in my class too although they are WGA members.)

It is my fault I admit that my presence in the courtroom was not as auspicious as if I were Tom Wolfe or old acquaintances and class members like Norman Mailer (deceased)  or Truman Capote (deceased) or my pal Paddy Chayefsky (deceased) – not to mention Milos Forman -- any of these writers might have done a better job as class rep in both literary appraisals of the worth of the lawsuit and the chicanery of the players:  unions not caring about members, lawyers not caring about clients, studios hiding behind studio walls -- maybe Upton Sinclair would’ve been the man for the job.  It’s really about slaughter behind walls.

My friends and collaborators John Huston and Richard Condon would have stood up and been heard, for sure.  -- Maybe even my famous and revered author contemporaries Don Delillo and Chris Buckley would speak out if they knew about this; both in my class, both with novels adapted by me for the screen.  Too bad I’m blacklisted and unable to film them. (see attached.)

I am only one of the thousands of earnest original screenwriters whose legacy was taken by a thieving union, but all it takes, as your Honor said in the last hearing, is “One voice puts us on the record.”

Instead of receiving justice from a lawsuit this pleader believed in, our basic constitutional rights have been wrapped up and snuffed out in a legal connivance-- almost!-- by Hollywood “super-lawyers”.  They may get top billing in the LA Journal and treat certain Judges to lunches, but Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel are really high-echelon contingency chasers who commonly profit from folks like me, who just aren’t quite hefty enough fame-wise or rich enough money-wise to get the attention of lawyers who put principles before profits.

“A Class action can only bind those who are adequately represented,” Class Action Prof. William B. Rubenstein, UCLA.

Messrs. Johnson and Kiesel made their wealth and reputations by representing the voiceless against the mighty.  But these mouthpieces speak mainly for themselves, and the voiceless remain unheard.  Unless they are able to speak out, as I do now, on behalf of my class and me.

Maybe I’m just a romantic, which is how I got into the situation of being a contracted ‘CHAMPION” for lots of folks who either don’t know, don’t care, or are too scared to stand up to the bullies at the unions.  (There have been serious articles written about whether writers should have children, based on their characteristics; if they can’t have kids, what are they doing “unionized?”  Of course no writer is “unionized” the way authentic laborers are unionized.  And this is the central deceit of any embrace of patron AFL-CIO, another issue.)

Since 1990 (in this regard) the unions have been saying “let them eat cake, if they can ever find it.” Among the signers of the original secret agreement between the WGA and DGA and the studios are Joel Grossman for Columbia and Robert Hadl for Universal.  These studio lawyers also advise the unions and advise my own lawyers.  How great it would be if the  rest of the world was a cozy as they, or in concert with their devious actions.

These men, along with Carl Gottlieb and Tony Segall at the WGA and David Roth at DGA and Bob Bush and David White and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland at SAG -- all of them led by Robert Hadl --, are the real movers behind the “foreign levy program” (which current  “program” phraseology was invented with my lawsuit.)

Although I rejected his involvement, and refused to attend a five-day mediation (which I still question), Joel Grossman nonetheless became the mediator in the 2012 settlement, while Robert Hadl is not only the union’s “counsel” but the “counsel” to my lawyer Neville Johnson, claiming to represent the writers, and the MPAA, representing the studios.

The tiny little bunch of cozy, crony controlling lawyers who invented the perpetual studio/union profit center they call the “foreign levy program,” add up to a mere 8 or 9 crooks (yes) with a mighty sway over the fates of hundreds of thousands of actors, writers and directors.

Neville  Johnson dropped the Chinese-puzzle settlements of the DGA and SAG at the foot of the bench of Judge Wiley like an Alley Cat dropping a rat hoping for a favor. Mr. Johnson attempted to pass off the blame for his self-proclaimed “deficiency” onto the court, pleading croc-style for the Judge’s help in enforcing settlements that were deficient in any tools for enforcement.

While demanding additional fees along with his iffy motions for enforcement at the DGA and SAG, Mr. Johnson once again diverts attention from the from the true issues of audit and the “cy pres” donation at the WGA.

In the writer’s class action, no motions were made for enforcement, and consultant Don Jasko refused me as plaintiff any contact with any audit or accounting, at the order of Neville Johnson, who told the Plaintiff’s consult that “Mr. Richert will use them in a lawsuit against us.”  Really?  Even so, the plaintiff owns the right to all the evidence gathered on his/her behalf.

The DGA and SAG settlements are templates for payouts to class-action lawyers who take large payments for themselves in settlements that injure of the rights of their clients.

Patric Verrone, David Young, Chris Heyser and Carl Gottlieb and the WGA finance committee and Board of Directors authorized millions of dollars in fees to Tony Segall and his law firm, and Dan Schecter’s law firm, and Bob Bush’s law firm,  to defend the unions and the WGA against true charges of hiding or absconding with even more millions taken from unwitting non-union American screenwriters, maybe 105,000 since Tony Segall never said which part of that number were union writers. (Hard to guess which lies are the poppers when the “pot” John Wells called kettle P. Verrone “a liar.”

There has been deafening silence from all parties at the court of Jude Wiley all these months since that last hour-long hearing in 2012, after the Judge himself spoke about how contentious these settlements can be – yet nobody says a word about these matters, not a whisper from any of the thousands of writers, actors and directors owed about upwards of 4 billion dollars in missing royalties – most unusual. 

(There is however a righteous case being re-filed in Federal Court in LA by Sunny Wise and Eric Hughes and his USAC group headed by former SAG President Ed Asner.  That will provide new evidence for this lawsuit, too:  over 1,000 pages.)

Remarkably, since the WGAw contract was signed there has been no move for enforcement of any provision of the settlement; while the DGA and SAG settlements are frozen “forever” allowing the DGA to account at its pleasure the $50 million it take in yearly for Directors who have no idea– or maybe not.

The drama in the courtroom with Mr. Johnson’s combative approach to Judge West (“Maybe you think it over in chambers,” said the cocky Mr. Johnson) looked very real, like the way paid-off boxers have to take a hit or two; and it almost appears his stratagems have worked, as the DGA and SAG settlements block all transparency, while Mr. Johnson disappears into the murky swamp of peer recognition.  But the fat lady waits in the wings holding hands with Lady Justice outside the boardroom door at the Writer’s Guild.

Neville Johnson solicited me to help in what he called the “scandal” for non-union writers at the WGA.  Next I found out I was the only litigant by reading the front page of The New York Times. 

When I figured something stinking was up – you don’t have to be an accountant to smell a rat – I became a wary, protesting class representative. I have remained the only writer in the plaintiff class. 

Outside, there were profound and successful objections from the likes of WGA screenwriter-expert and activist Eric Hughes (AGAINST ALL ODDS.) 

Before agreeing to settle, I was told by two Superior Court Judges that the lawsuit would provide “transparency” into the royalties for all U.S. writers, even if it meant the WGA would be allowed continue to say that it’s 7% was the entire sum until the truth was accounted for. Because of my reservations, the union had to pay out three times more to Messers. Johnson and Kiesl to settle WILLIAM RICHERT VS WGA as other guilds paid for their lawsuits. 

Maybe Neville’s $1.6 million vs. his $400 thousand for the SAG and DGA does not mean our class’ settlement provides 3 times the protection against piracy ; but the WGA settlement does provide redress and accountability that the other settlements do not, and these details make the difference between justice and continuing economic tyranny for non union writers.  Neville Johnson was the lawyer for all 3 unions, and did 3 depositions in total – all at the WGA, all showing serious infractions, all ignored in the courtroom.

[SAG and DGA paid Neville Johnson so little, compared with the WGA 1.6 million payout made by the union’s inside/outside counsel Tony Segall, that Mr. Johnson could hardly do any work, so the unions succeeded in having their case proudly settled by Judge West “with prejudice.” So nobody would be able to look at them again.  Such is the way the unions in Hollywood take care their members’ trust.  Judge West did not settle the WGA suit “with prejudice,” though it was based on the same exact premise. I was a loyal union member myself until the WGA STOLE my credit for THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT/WEST WING, which I shall not describe in this context,and about which Eric Hughes has written at length, for it shows the union’s ongoing contempt for law and writers.]

Instead of making any attempt to rectify or correct the losing situation he created for his actor and director clients “forever, with prejudice” Mr. Johnson has taken his money and run. [Maybe he doesn’t realize a quarter million people, along with their relatives and heirs, can chase him.  His hubris high, his offices are all made of glass.]

Neville Johnson and his firm Johnson & Johnson claim to be holding 58K in evidence and other documents regarding enforcement of the settlement which may concurrently help prosecute the “fraud” that Mr. Johnson described in court in two separate hearings.  Since the court says Mr. Johnson was paid “in full,” this all belongs to the plaintiff(s) and must be given up.

Without recourse I was that lonely writer surrounded by lawyers in a courtroom full of lies hoping for a hearing from a judge, and you gave it to me many moons ago, and here I am again, pleading to be heard, but this time the case is “ripe” for enforcement in the parlance of courts, so you can stick a “fork” into it, in the parlance of Judge Wiley.

RICHERT VS WGA SETTLEMENT  DEMANDS TRANSPARENCY “FROM INCEPTION.” 

CANON 9:  ‘THE MERE POSSIBILITY THAT THE ATTORNEY MAY ACT TO FURTHER HIS OWN INTERESTS OVER THOSE OF THE CLASS PRESENTS A CONFLICT MANDATING DISQUALIFICATION” 

APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY

AS TIME PASSES QUICKLY it will soon become starkly apparent that the entire foreign levy “program” was as phantom as a bunko skit, fast as electronic transfers of billions – written and tightly controlled by a tiny group of studio-union lawyers, front man for the studios being Universal’s Head Counsel Robert Hadl --also representing the actors writers and directors – and for the WGAw we had Universal’s JAWS writer and WGA organizer since 1968, the braggadocio Jaw-breaker, current treasurer of the union – Carl Gottlieb, whose patron as a WGA writer is none other than Steven Spielberg.  And of course all of this does matter to the pocketbooks and copyrights of writers who do not cow-tow to Hollywood, but have nonetheless innocently been skewered by a lawsuit with my name on it.

If Neville Johnson had been paid, as contingency lawyers are mostly paid in large class action lawsuits, his take should have been one third of the amount the WGA says it paid out – or roughly $50 million dollars.  I think he only took $1.6 because that was his “understanding” with Robert Hadl to begin with.  ( I Saw Mr. Hadl sitting behind me at every single court appearance.)

More significant is that if the WGA says it paid out $157,000,000 to U.S. writers, it really “accepted and divided” somewhere around $1.4 billion dollars meant for U.S. writers, money  taken by labor unions and divided with management, as they like to call themselves.  I have other names for blokes like these.  In all my years as a screenwriter, starting back in ’63 (that’s 1963), I have never worked for “management.”

We need to know exactly where that 1.4 billion dollars went, as it is all accounted for someplace, and how much was sent for not-for-hire non-union authors, starting with a bone fide audit of my checks for THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK “from inception,” which audit is the purpose of the Lead Plaintiff as template for the class – and which provenance of transparency was the whole point of the 3-court litigation.  Not mentioning the major MPAA studios all these years in either the Federal or State courts or in the press was an awesome, impressive achievement for Mr. Hadl and his group, like writing about Joan of Arc and never referring to the Inquisition. 

[I spent ten years penning my version of THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, and even longer on other scripts.  It was a work of freedom, not a work for hire, and I solely own the copyright for both script and film, which I originally wrote for River Phoenix (deceased.) For the likes of the WGA and Universal and Carl Gottlieb or Robert Hadl to abscond with a single penny meant for me or any of my artists should send them to the pen for piracy along with perjury.]

Maybe John Grisham will help find the right lawyer.  Maybe Bill Lerach has got his California bar back.  As Bill Murray says, “Groundhog day is over” (written by class member Harold Ramis (diseased) and Danny Rubin (alive.)

In no way did your Honor shut the door to his chambers on justice for the 250,000 souls touched by the ramifications of these once-joined litigations for fraud and conversion, which fraud goes on at this hour, with the same union lawyers and union “leaders” like Patric Verrone and Carl Gottlieb marching round the circles of its doubletalk conundrum, like puffed figurines in a clock in the center of Prague (where some of my class members may now be residing.)

-- Actually, my class action lawsuit more-like resembles those fake Prada bags that carry the wallet for a while, then come apart at the seams, exposing the sham, although its purse may still carry some weight, the way a fake Rolex will tell time until its phony mechanism burns out, corruptions turning to ashes inside out, Hadl’s dropping out of moneybags.

Copyrights are not mere “intellectual property,” since there are real dummies who’ve written for movies and television.  Copyright means bone fide irreducible ownership, unless sold or licensed; never stolen. Each and every WGA foreign levy check says “copyright.”  And now that the WGA has accounted for 157,000 million sent to writers – with only 1 million of that not-accounted-for, and even that money should have an accounting – the WGA should have no trouble looking up my missing checks PDQ, being already accounted for.

Your Honor has declared “All parties should be heard,” and the time is ripe for a hearing.  This case is nowhere never “res judica” but, as you have said, “very active.”  Perhaps, if the walls of willful obfuscation in the settlement are too high for the writers to be free of this agreement’s encumbrances, we may need to refresh the original complaint.

Writers of all kinds are a great treasure for society, and their property, rights, and honor have to be protected as any endangered species.

Like our friend the honeybee, vanishing from the pollinating flowers of America, writers get missed when they start to disappear even – maybe especially – from Hollywood.  The magic will light up again with their return. 

AS BOTH PLAINTIFF AND WRITER- OBSERVOR, and having read your original writing on patents and copyright,  [maybe I should have “patented” my work, for if anything, original writing is the essence of singular invention and useful arts] I look forward to your Honor’s continuing adjudication of our class action case. 

Sincerely,

William Richert,

EXHIBITS ATTACHED 

                         

]]>Sun, 28 Jul 2013 23:11:15 GMThttp://williamrichert.com/richert-v-wgaw/letter-to-superior-court-judge-wiley-jr THE DESK OF WILLIAM RICHERT

LEAD PLAINTIFF WILLIAM RICHERT,
WILLIAM RICHERT VS WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, et. al.

CASE NO: BC339972
and related DGA/SAG cases 310.453.8415 richertwilliam@mac.com

JULY 27, 2012 TO:

HONORABLE JOHN SHEPARD WILEY JR. DEPT 311
LA SUPERIOR COURT
600 Commonwealth Avenue

Los Angeles, California

via email and Hand Delivery

cc: "All American writers" represented in this lawsuit.

cc: Counsel Neville Johnson & Paul Kiesel for Plaintiff and Tony Segall for WGAw

RE: CLASS REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM RICHERT RESPECTFULLY ASKS COURT TO DENY COUNSEL'S MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL FEES.

REQUESTS LAWYER'S NEWEST FUNDS BE HELD FOR CLASS TO PAY FOR NEW ACCOUNTING/REVIEW AND INDEPENDENT COUNSEL OVERSIGHT IN BREACHED SETTLEMENT.

HEARING:
DATE: August 9, 2012 TIME: 9:30A.M. PLACE: Dept. 311

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Dear Judge Wiley,

Your honor, as you know I am the Lead Plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of non-union free American writers against the Writer's Guild of America, Inc., a non- profit corporation.

During the course of this 7-year litigation I have become the certified representative for both union and non-union writers in tiny towns and places all across America.

I also came to represent all 19,500 WGA members who today find themselves bound "forever" to the settlement terms because I was falsely presented to the courts as a member "Emeritus In Arrears," a category invented for me by the union, which I never was.

There is no other writer among the named plaintiffs.

I am duty bound by Congressional mandate to act as "Citizens Attorney General" for each and every one of my class.

Ethically, I must inform the court about matters that have not been presented to the Judge: willful, serious omissions that deserve the court's attention and remedies:

1. 1.)  ON JANUARY 10 2012 Defendant WGAw corporation and its Board of Directors misled Judge West in Dept. 311 by saying there was an acceptable audit in settlement, placed on the wga.org website. Our lawyers did not tell the Judge that the auditors themselves say the website document is NOT AN AUDIT, and cannot be used by anybody except the WGA itself, thus deceiving the court and writer class into believing the lawsuit is satisfied. Both the writer’s class counsel and defendant’s counsel put forth this audit knowing it was not an audit and could not be used as an audit.
   
   
2. 2.)  Significantly, and only just discovered in DGA documents, a new “second set of books” has been disclosed, pinpointing yearly audits of foreign levies for WGA, SAG and DGA along with the MPAA studios dating back to 2006. It appears that throughout all these years of courtroom litigation for an audit, the guilds and attorneys concealed he existence of an annual ongoing $70,558 PKF "Tri Guild Audit", an audit paid for by the studios which might provide startling new evidence of actual amounts involved in the lawsuits, an audit of the money belonging to the writer class that the class deserves to examine since the only audit given after all these yeas is a NOT AUDIT and can't be used as an accounting for the millions "disappeared.”
   
   

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1. 3.)  The annual "review" on the WGAw website is also bogus and consists of only one page, and the small print states, brazenly and unbelievably, that the audit is taken from the same KMPG numbers provided entirely by the same WGA people accused of embezzlement; thus in no way can this one page document be used to verify class accounting demands under the settlement.
   
   
2. 4.)  In the May 16 hearing Neville Johnson revealed for the first time that the foreign levy amount collected by the WGAw actually 200 million, or almost twice the 104 million the union told the courts and Variety and the class.
   
   
3. 5.)  In post-settlement documents the WGA has revealed that 9,360 writers received the just acknowledged 200 million, but offers no proof at all that this happened, how the money was divided, not a single cancelled check.
   
   
4. 6.)  Though they were told repeatedly from the bench by Judge West to provide accounting documents and correspondence to the Lead Plaintiff for the class, Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel and Don Jasko refused, excluding American writers from their lawsuit almost entirely.
   
   
5. 7.)  The court should not allow Mr. Johnson again to substitute any non-writer for the position of Lead Plaintiff for “all American writers,” as he and Tony Segall attempted to substitute into the case the daughter of non-writer Pearl Retchin, a class plaintiff who was dead for a year before the court was told.
   
   
6. 8.)  As Lead Plaintiff in the case I still have not been provided any accounting at all, and have not been paid the minimum $75,000 owed to me (CAFA) against an estimated $233,000 lost as a result of the embezzlements. My attorney Paul Kiesl told me that my checks from the WGA would be used as the basis for an in-depth accounting that would apply to all the class. This accounting could be compared to the DGA and SAG accountings for my films throughout all three unions. I relied on Mr. Kiesl’s expertise, as he gives lectures on class actions to LA Superior Court Judges, is a Co Chair of the California Bar and provides ample expertise on class actions procedures. Mr. Kiesl sat with me for three days, during which time he explained in front of witness how Lead Plaintiffs accountings are templates for the class. Because of his promise of a fair and understandable audit, given in front of witnesses, provided with court- sanctioned expert opinion I signed the settlement agreement for the class.
   
   
7. 9.)  I have been retaliated against by both the WGAw Executives and Board in false statements to their membership, and by my own lawyers, who filed vexatious tax reports that got me in trouble with the IRS. In his Oct 3 2011 hearing Judge West admonished the WGA to quit any harm to the writer's plaintiff, but my lawyers ignored him and did nothing about it and the WGA harassing behavior continues online.
   
   

“THE COURT: YOU KNOW, THERE’S A LOT OF MYSTERY GOING ON HERE.

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AND WE ALL OUGHT TO BE AWARE THAT I’VE GOT SOME CONCERNS. AND I WANT TO HEAR FROM MR. RICHERT ON THIS ISSUE.” – Judge Carl J. West, May 21, 2008

Your honor, I declare that if the DGA's accounting is "laughable," the WGA brings down the house with its claim that its Board of Directors spent approximately 35 million in "administrative fees” etc., – not to mention attorney and whistle blower fees – an amount exceeding the entire WGAw yearly budget -- to distribute non-union and union foreign levies – not a penny of which belonged to them -- when they were unable to account for any of it until the appearance a “not audit” audit, accompanied by the equally sudden appearance of 200 million after the recent sudden appearance of 104 million -- and all of it a fraction of what actually was collected by unions divided with the studios -- is pure bunk. WGA corruption exposer Eric Hughes’ documents, and Teri Mial’s paid-off employee Whistle blower testimony, show all the accounts to be false.

Therefore, on behalf of the class I represent, I seek a decree that shifts the funds for future attorneys fees to a general fund for the class of writers I represent, so the just- discovered "Tri Guild" accountings can be examined, and new attorneys can be hired to look at the entirety of this settlement action and its aftermath in your courtroom.

Because of these post-settlement revelations, an outside accounting is in the interest of fairness to the millions owed by law to the authors and screenwriters of the 102,00
"titles" the WGA claims to have collected money for, and split with the DGA and studios.

With these revelations since Judge West retired, we discover a large number of artists in plaintiff classes, with the guilds owing money to 102,000 writers and 102,000 directors of those titles and the 500,000 or more actors in the related SAG case; they say they paid it, but as Mr. Hughes puts it, there is “not a shred of evidence.” -- But sworn evidence of plenty of shredding.

“THE COURT: THE UNDERLYING GOAL OF THIS SETTLEMENT AND THE COURT’S DETERMINATION THAT IT WAS A FAIR AND REASONBLE SETTLEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE CLASS OF PEOPLE WHO WERE CERTIFIED FOR SETTLEMENT PURPOSES AND WHO ARE BENEFITTING FROM THIS SETTLEMENT: IS THAT THERE WOULD BE A MORE TRANSPARENT AND OPEN ACCOUNTING OF COLLECTIONS AND DISTRIBUTIONS.” Judge Carl J. West, Dept 311, Jan 10, 2012

As "Citizen Attorney General" for my class of American writers, I plead that your honor will assist this plaintiff by enacting the following motions in the interests of fairness, justice and transparency:

MOTION TO DENY ATTORNEY FEES TO CLASS LAWYERS in the

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August 9, 2012 hearing until the court is satisfied the writer class plaintiff has funds to hire a lawyer equal to the super-lawyers so the writer-plaintiff can adequately defend the class against further theft, "Both federal and California courts have held that, when the ethical violation in question is a conflict of interest between the attorney and the client, the appropriate fee for the attorney in question is zero." -- letter to Judge Highberger re fraud on LA Superior court.

MOTION TO COMPEL DEFENDANT DGA, ITS CFO AND PRESIDENT AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS TO PROVIDE ALL PKF STUDIO AUDITS IN ITS POSSESSION RELATING TO THE WGAW FOREIGN LEVY LAWSUIT, INCLUDING AUDIT OF WITH MAJOR STUDIOS TO VERIFY AMOUNTS. The class should not be the out and out loser in a class action if the action has merit and is sound. The class is entitled to simple transparency in all audits which relate to money which was collected illegally for thousands of unsuspecting free writers and writers not hired by studios. It is in the most urgent interest of the class to know how much of their money was given to the studios, and to each of the unions, and how much actually received from this settlement.

MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE TO COMPEL WGA TO PROVIDE WRITER CLASS COPIES OF WGAW"TRI STATE" AUDITS SHOWING WHERE THE FOREIGN LEVY MONEY DISAPPEARED. The settlements do not release claims against the WGAw for splitting with studios outside the collective bargaining agreement; the settlements do not settle any future claims from non-union American actors OR union American directors. The Board of Directors are basically withholding evidence.

MOTION TO COMPEL COPIES OF DOCUMENTS, ACCOUNTINGS AND EMAILS BETWEEN CONSULTANT DONALD JASKO AND WGAW et. al. CFO DON GOR BE GIVEN TO THE WRITER CLASS. Donald Jasko asked me specifically for copies of checks I got from the WGA that did not match the DGA; I did not know it was just to keep me quiet, and he had no intention of using them.

MOTION TO COMPEL ACCOUNTING FOR LEAD PLAINTIFF WILLIAM RICHERT AS TEMPLATE FOR THE CLASS, AS PROMISED by counsel Paul Kiesl before signing the settlement, specifically the titles “Law and Disorder,” “The Happy Hooker,” “Success,” “Winter Kills,” and “The Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” “The Man In The Iron Mask,” years 1974-2012.

MOTION TO COMPEL WGAw to provide copies of its settlement documents to states attorneys-general and Federal authorities as provided by law, since the affected are from all states.

MOTION TO DEMAND NEVILLE JOHNSON AND WGAW CEASE RETALIATION AGAINST NAMED PLAINTIFF, as the WGAw puts false statements about me on its website and to letters to its members, and Neville Johnson purposefully

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filed misleading tax information to the IRS causing me tax burdens. No class representative should have to fear retribution or bad-mouthing from the defendant or his own lawyers.

I have been threatened to be dumped roadside, and blacklisted, and other things during this confrontational litigation with my former union, who claim I am a member when they need the association and then deny it in emails to their members when they don't.

BACKGROUND AND AUTHORITY

Neville Johnson told the LA Daily Journal that he was the mastermind of the “3 sister” foreign levy lawsuits in 2005, drawing upon his existing clients as Lead Plaintiffs.

I was such a client at the time, with my jury award the highest he ever got, almost 15 million. Mr. Johnson knew I’d publicly stated that the WGAw was corrupt from having my credit for THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT/WEST WING given to another writer without due process or transparency just the way Mr. Johnson described the way the guild concealed millions in undistributed funds for unnamed non-union writers the guild divided with the studios in a long-running kind of mutual extortion.

The real force behind Neville Johnson's lawsuits was Eric Hughes, screenwriter of "Against All Odds" and "White Knights." It was Eric Hughes, WGA presidential candidate running against corrupt credit arbitration in the WGA, who obtained insider documents from whistle blower Teri Mial, paid six-figures herself to keep quiet in this lawsuit. And it was Eric Hughes who introduced Mial to Mr. Johnson, and who showed Mr. Johnson, along with me and other prominent journalists, just what the corruption looked like on paper.

Mr. Johnson was essentially a copyist of Mr. Hughes' written allegations used by his firm Johnson & Rishwain for their original complaints of fraud and other things against all three Hollywood “labor” guilds.

We ask the court to demand that documents held by Mr. Hughes be given to the class. Mr. Hughes owes it to the writers, actors and directors to provide copies of evidence that rightfully belongs to them, and which can eliminate instantly, with publication of names and amounts, all doubt about who did what, and can provide immediate finality to this class litigation.

However, far more significant to this breached settlement, a game changer, is the discovery from new statements by the DGA that the unions and studios have actually been covertly doing audits all this time. This means that all during years of lengthy courtroom hearings for the DGA, WGA and SAG since the lawsuit was filed in 2005, the lawyers kept quiet. Now we see proof positive how all foreign levies were all audited by the studios and themselves since maybe as early as 2003 in what the CFO of the DGA

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calls "Tri Guild Foreign Levy Audits."

It would be a public sham to continue hearings in court to get something already got.

It is iconic misdirection among 19+ lawyers for the unions who appeared for these guilds in court during the past 7 years and never mentioned they already had what the class was looking for: an audit; evidence of a billion-dollar secret royalty split between the unions and studios approved by nobody among the free Americans in my class, whose money it actually was/is, and who could use it today.

BIG STORY, BIG PLAYERS

This could only happen in Hollywood, where a whisper can sink a ship of a
career. Where unions have meetings with both writers and young video dancers with teamsters in tow. Intimidation is rampant, your honor should know.

Once I discovered Mr. Johnson, and next Mr. Keisl, were ready to sell out the rights of American writers for their personal and corporate profits, that they were essentially profiteering on Superior Court litigation without regard for the greater long term rights of the writers who are their clients, I became in direct conflict with my lawyers while standing in place as lead plaintiff, and I am standing still, for I have not surrendered the original goal of the case: a true accounting and payout and end to unethical behavior.

I attach a "disappeared" check signed by Patric Verrone made out to the poet Bukowski, a fellow class member.

Mr. Johnson tells each judge about how weak and unorganized our related cases for writers, directors and actors are; tells each judge he/she is our only hope, but that's because Neville Johnson is not doing his job, as it is not the Judge's job to act as advocate for the lawyer's underdog in a lawsuit.

The lawyers for both sides in this case purport to represent writers and artists, but none of them really do.

The true facts and true movers have been concealed from Dept. 311, from both you and Judge West before you, and Judge Morrow before that in Federal court.

The court transcript of January 10, before he retired, shows Judge West believed both sides when he was told an "audit" had been placed on the WGAw website. His sudden retirement meant he never saw the one page NOT AN AUDIT that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kiesel and Mr. Segall told him gave settlement finality to the RICHERT VS. WGAw lawsuit.

At Judge West’s last hearing in Dept. 311, January 10, 2012, which I couldn’t attend because I wasn’t told about it, Judge West did say to Messrs. Johnson and Schecter: "I don't want the two of you in front of me any more. It doesn't do any good,” and “I know

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enough to be dangerous.”

Judge West said if it had his name on it, "it has to be right."

Before telling Judge West the audit was on the WGAw website, Neville Johnson claimed that the settlement was in material breach; only a large payment to Donald Jasko changed that, along with fees yet to be paid to Neville Johnson. But for these payments, the settlement is still in breach.

I don't claim copyright but my name is on this lawsuit and I've known some great writers who deserve my sticking to our rights, even if I am threatened with expulsion from the writer's lawsuit in favor of lawyers. A case brought on behalf of writers should have a writer in it.

SOLIDARITY OF CORRUPTION

It is absurd to have the accused corporation offer its own accounting without strict oversight, or any oversight. Having the WGAw review its own review is like a joke; a "Not Audit" is not acceptable to settle a lawsuit except for suckers, and putting numbers from a "not audit" up on the wga.org website as an "one-time review" with an “annual review” consisting of 3 lines is offensive and insulting to my class.

I still have not gotten any form of accounting for my own foreign levies owed and interest bearing dating back to 1974. Please show us the stubbs.

Besides being useless to the class, the accounting is AICA, not GAAP; another breach.

ACCOUNTING NOT PERFORMED ACCORDING TO GENERAL ACCOUNTING PRINCIPLES AS REQUIRED IN SETTLEMENT

The startling figure 200 million entered into the record by Neville Johnson is double what was reported only months ago by the WGA to Variety. Where’d it come from? We need to know, your honor.

Now suddenly, the WGAw says it paid out 21 million dollars to its members/non members in the single year 2011. This single amount is 20% of what the union claims to have paid out over the past 20 years -- and this year the lowest in DVD sales since the past decade or so -- how does this add up?

In fact, the WGA claims it collected 85 million dollars plus 1,323,149 “interest/income” for members and free writers nationwide since 2007, more than in all the years from 1992-2007, when DVD sales were ballooning.

WGAw Board claims it distributed 21 million to members this year. In the past 20 years they charged 35+ million in “fees” to do all this “administration,” but cannot produce a single canceled check in evidence.

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How can the WGAw charge its members roughly one-quarter of what it collected for "administrative" fees when it can't show it administered anything, when it has to hire an outside firm for an audit amazingly limited and confined to numbers only they offer, and nothing more?

How can the lawyers from several firms keep billing the same writers in all cases millions in fees without producing a single accounting of merit? In fact, hiding the audit that really does exist.

In the hearing before you on May 16 in Dept 311, where this case has been for years, the WGA counsel is silent when Neville Johnson suddenly pops up with an extra 100 million.

The Lead Plaintiff is obliged to protest. The court should look at the 2007 WGAw accounting, given under oath, which both duplicates and contradicts the KMPG report.

The KMPG-WGAw accounting, approved by its Board of Directors to settle a case for fraud, doesn't compute, add up, or make sense. It's a big lie.

That means the Boards of Directors and Executives at 3 major guilds handling the money of thousands of people are untrustworthy.

THE BREACHED SETTLEMENT WITHOUT COMPLIANCE GIVES WGAw/MPAA STUDIOS ECONOMIC CONTROLS OVER U.S. WRITERS NATIONWIDE UNLESS THE CLASS SAYS FOUL AND THE COURT ALLOWS THE CLASS TO SPEAK.

The WGAW has concealed facts about writers’ credits and income before.

It was the writer's guild union who blacklisted hundreds of great American screenwriters, their own colleagues, putting them out of work for years, a long list of names also due foreign levies, if living; otherwise, their heirs.

This Hollywood union/studio combo are seeking to control piracy on the internet, when they are pirates themselves with American foreign royalties and copyrights.

The guilds and studios have "organized' the collection of foreign royalties for all American artists, and they have done so in secret, illegally.

American writers and artists should know that there is a huge database with their names and financial information on it, as many as 700,000 citizens, a database they cannot access.

The WGA/MPAA should not be in possession of that database – U.S. citizens’ social security numbers and addresses and tax ID’s – which will soon number in the millions as more and more independent filmmakers sell their work abroad over the internet and other places.

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Unions so ostentatiously corrupt should not have access to this information so as to seize it as a “mailing list” ripe for exploitation.

WGAw claims the 2007 strike gives the union jurisdiction over the Internet for any thing that moves, saying if it moves it must be written, and they control it.

The WGAw refers to writers who write without a union or new media contract with them as “scabs.”

“THE COURT: I GUESS I HAVE REAL CONCERNS ABOUT HOW ALL THESE NEGOTIATIONS AND MEDIATIONS WERE TAKING PLACE WITH NO LIVING CLASS REPRESENTATIVE FOR ONE OF THE SUPP. CLASSES. THAT'S A PROBLEM.

I HAVE A QUESTION REGARDING THE ABILITY OF CLASS COUNSEL TO CONTINUE TO REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF THE CLASS AT THIS JUNCTURE GIVEN THE INFORMATION THAT HAS BEEN PLACED BEFORE THE COURT.” Judge Carl J. West, Dept 311, March 23, 2009

Paul Kiesl, who induced me with his knowledge of facts and law (in front of 2 witnesses) to sign this settlement on behalf of my class, did not attend the May 16 hearing, perhaps because he was out raising 660 million in emergency funding for the LA Superior Court system. That amount may have been lost to the LA tax base during the 2.9 billion WGA strike in 2007, which still hurts, led by the same Board who gave the KMPG accounting.

Your honor clerked with Justice Powell who vigorously promoted the idea of corporations having the same rights as individuals -- and it ought to work both ways.

If corporations have the same rights as individuals, as Chief Justice Powell believed, they have the same obligations for honesty and fair dealing, and ought not use their lopsided power, as in LA, where unions and studios possess vastly superior resources and hidden agreements dating back years. If their rights Trump ours, and they as “corporate individuals” are protected over my class and me as an non-corporate individual in your courtroom, my class action is doomed.

Individuals cannot fight major corporations alone, which is why class actions were created. Of course the court knows that, you handle class actions routinely.

I am not be able to afford a lawyer on my writer's income, esp. now that the WGAw has stopped sending me residuals and levy checks altogether as a result of this litigation.

LAWYER CLIENT CONFLICT WHEN CLIENT REPRESENTS A LARGE CLASS

Some legalists have told me to contact the Bar about Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesl, but it's quicker to just email Mr. Kiesl as he is Co-Chair of the California bar.

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Eric Hughes did complain to the bar, which found the fact Mr. Kiesel didn’t associate himself into the case was problematical, as Mr. Kiesl already knows.

CALIFORNIA CODE OF JUDICAL ETHICS: (1) A judge shall not allow family, social, political or other relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment, nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that any individual is in a special position to influence the judge.

Also I feel obliged to say, as the only writer court-certified to represent my class that your honor’s remarks to me on first sight when I raised my hand to speak in protest after Neville Johnson said my case was "settled" when I say no -- when you advised me this was “not a town hall” “or a therapy meeting” -- as if I were a hothead or a nutcase -- and later when you said in front of me that these lawyers sitting in front of me were such that “every law school student in the country would like to be like you” -- and especially when you told me that my lawyers were "famous," implying I was not, and maybe for some faulty reason I was not -- these statements from your authority, which are absolute, made me think I should complain to the Commission of Judges for fair dealing with all parties in a lawsuit -- as to whether you showed bias towards a Lead Plaintiff in a class action lawsuit in favor of lawyers --but as in the case of my lawyers, I may as well just state my concerns to you here directly, respectfully, and ask you as a member of the California’s Commission on Judicial Ethics Opinions to consider the pain of my humiliation in court.

You honor must be aware that you are highly regarded as a brilliant legal mind in article after article about Judges on the Internet, and so your initial opinion of me is even more damaging and I plead with the court to remember:

(8)...A JUDGE SHALL MANAGE THE COURTROOM IN A MANNER THAT PROVIDES ALL LITIGANTS THE OPPORTINITY TO HAVE THEIR MATTERS FAIRLY ADJUDICATED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW.
COMENTARY: ...A judge should encourage and seek to facilitate settlement, but parties should not feel coerced into surrendering their right to have their controversy resolved by the courts.”

This class action is not about coupons or consumers, it is about creators and copyrights and human rights, each and every artist involved is different, and that is one of their similarities as a class. No assembly line here.

As artists, they have a right to know if their work is shown abroad, indeed shown anywhere, and they have the right to be assured their accountings are transparent and honest.

I figure the combo lawyers have made millions off the defendants in these cases so far. At the hearing for attorney fees on August 9, if your honor could move a little cash --

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which comes from writers anyhow -- to the other side of the table -- it would mean we could pay for a true accounting, a great leap towards justice for as 700,000 Americans.

Like Neville Johnson, I concur that history will be made in your courtroom, only not in Mr. Johnson’s way.

We shall do all in our power to make sure this settlement is not an out and out loss for the freedom of artists in America, a Hollywood snuff job for our civil rights and economic rights as free writers and artists in a free nation.

Sincerely,

William Richert
Lead Plaintiff
WILLIAM RICHERT VS
WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA et al 3 ATTACHMENTS:

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