FRAUD AGAIN AT THE WGAW

WILLIAM RICHERT

richertwilliam@mac.com

September 26, 2011

 Plaintiff in pro per   

Service at Attorney's last address/email

                                    

                          SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

                          COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, CENTRAL CIVIL WEST

RICHERT, an individual, Plaintiff V.

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA WEST, INC.

Defendant.

CASE NO. BC 339972

(Related to:  Webb v. Director's guild of America, Inc.

and Osmond v. Screen Actor's Guild, Inc.)

Assigned for all purposes to the Honorable Carl J. West

Hearing Date:  October 3 2011

Time:             1:30 P.M.

600 Commonwealth Avenue

Los Angeles, CA

TO PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY NEVILLE JOHNSON, HIS FIRM, AND DEFENDANT AND HIS ATTORNEY OF RECORD

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that William Richert, in pro per, respectfully moves this Court to allow Lead Plaintiff to VOID SETTLEMENT AS WRITTEN BASED ON DISCOVERY OF FRAUD AND BREACH OF SETTLEMENT AND RE-SET ENTIRE SETTLEMENT

FURTHER PLAINTIFF ASKS THE COURT FOR PERMISSION REPRESENT THE CLASS OF ALL AMERICAN WRITERS OWED FOREIGN LEVIES IN PRO PER AS A NON UNION WRITER UNTIL NEVILLE JOHNSON IS OUT OR REINSTATED AND PAUL KIESEL IS OUT OR REINSTATED OR A NEW LAWYER IS ASSOCIATED INTO THE LAWSUIT.

                      The motion is made with reference to the following facts:

1.) Your honor, fraud has been discovered at the WGAw and according to the attached letter from Nick Kurtz as dictated by Paul Kiesl, this voids the entire settlement RICHERT VS WGAW et al. and the WGAw has published false and defamatory information to the general public about the settlement and the Lead Plaintiff in order to discredit both, which a Class Action is intended to prevent and remedy at its core.

2.) Tony Segal is a central figure in the fraud has been part of the WGAw fraud at the heart of the class certification from its inception, in the courtroom of Judge Morrow, and he and Emma Lehney and the Daniel Scott Schecter lawyer gave false and misleading information to Judge Morrow about the Lead Plaintiff’s membership status, which lead to a non union Plaintiff becoming the representative for all 18,500 WGAw and WGAe members, when I started out suing these very unions for the many thousands of American writers and book authors who belong to no union at all, and who far outnumber the union members bound by this settlement.

3.) Plaintiff knows you are the only man who can void it and that you helped guide the process with great effort and patience and endurance and Plaintiff knows you can remove him from the case with a check mark, and Plaintiff asks that you remember he is not a lawyer and never asked for the job of class representative, and is only attempting to write like a lawyer and act like a lawyer and direct himself so, being a member of all three classes and Plaintiff asks the court to view this entire motion with the awareness that it is indeed a prayer and a wish.

4.) Class Plaintiff respectfully asks the court to re-set the case to the original complaint which is about faud and does not include the representation of any WGAw and wGAe members by the plalintiff, so that WGA union signed members may again have the ability to file a lawsuit of their own.

5.) In the unlikely event this settlement actually is voided, Class Plaintiff further requests that you associate into the case a lawyer for the Writer Class as well-versed in the system of Class Actions as Mr. Paul Kiesel, who has advised LA Judges on the inner working of such lawsuits, but who was not associated into the case, and Mr. Neville Johnson, a brilliant lawyer and thinker and fighter for the underdog, but one who has not communicated with the lead plaintiff during most of this period and therefore cannot be said to have represented the class adequately.

6.) Plaintiff pleads that his deposition be taken and included in the court docket.

7.) Plaintiff pleads that the re-filed lawsuit include the names of actual defendants including but not limited to John Wells, DavidYoung, Patric Veronne, Carl Gottlieb, Daniel Petrie Jr., Ari Rubin, Sally Burmester, Aaron Sorkin along with studios Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures et. al. Lawyer for defendant WGAw should not be granted exception from prosecution as he and Carl Gottlieb, presently secretary-treasurer of the WGAw, claim to be architects of the foreign levy program – which did not exist before this lawsuit was filed and cannot be said to exist now.

8.)   

Some on the WGAw Board of Directors was aware of criminal acts on the part of WGAw headquarters employees, like Teri Mial, and approved union payoffs to cover up embezzlement.  Those on the WGAw Board of Directors during the 1990-2011 period may also be included as defendants if the court decides.

9.)  WGAw class asks that the SAG and DGA be re-connected so that those actors and writers who made movies not covered by any kind of union contracts for decades, owed astronomical amounts of money they can use right now in this economy -- are not silenced by the settlement of any one case.  The SAG settlement, now being examined by the Depart of Labor  according to VARIETY went unexamined and unknown by thousands of actors who were never given any information about any kind of lawsuit involving them as SAG chose only union-centric means to reach them.  But they are the true majority of actors owed money by the SAG union and the SAG settlement not only excludes all of these actors but allows SAG to keep the money it took.  These actors should not have to file another six year lawsuit to get to the place we are today. 

10.) Among the actors recently contacted by SAG members among themselves, not a single SAG member was aware of the settlement or had been told about it by the union. The union appears to have misled the court about the mailing. Thus I have been joined by former SAG President Ed Asner and hundreds of other actors sending a message to the Department of Labor, as reported in VARIETY.

11.) As Joel Grossman was one of the original signers of the foreign levy agreement the Class Plaintiff says was illegal, the Plaintiff asks that he be removed from the settlement as arbiter of any kind for writers.

12.) Class Plaintiff asks that Robert Hadl be removed as legal advisor to Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel as he is advisor to the Defendant WGAw.

13.) Class plaintiff respectfully asks the court to consider the importance of this lawsuit to the Los Angeles community as a whole.  The 2007 WGAw strike against the entire entertainment industry may have been an attempt by the union to keep non union writers from speaking to union writers, thus disabling the ability of writers to speak openly without recrimination or public exposure as a “scab” by union hard-line on-liners like Niki Finke.

14.) Class Plaintiff asks the court to consider the rights of all actors and writers and directors living in Los Angeles whose rights to work are interfered with by unions when strikes are created without merit, led by the same men who hid the foreign levies until this suit was filed by Mr. Johnson, as the WGAw strike for reality show writers etc. hurt the local economy with a loss of 2.9 billion even cutting some court programs.

15.) The Class Plaintiff is but a stand-in for not only the writers touched by this case to date but all American writers in the future who might want to put videos  on the internet or sell indie movies abroad, and this is a giant number of Americans as evidenced by you tube and the 500 million + who might put videos on facebook’s new service.

16.) Class Plaintiff wishes to advise the court that the document presented to the court in 2009, MOTION TO DISMISS MOTION TO DISMISS has disappeared from the court docket, and asks that the document be replaced and re-examined if the court has time.

17.) If you decide not to replace the Plaintiff’s lawyers as you may do since they are “Superlawyers” familiar with the case and are men you know and trust as “Honorable men,” then I ask that you urge them to fight harder for their clients, the artists of America.

[§50] Dismissal or Compromise Requires Court Approval

A class action shall not be dismissed or compromised without court approval. See Rule 23(e), FRCP; In re Jiffy Lube Sec. Litig., 927 F.2d 155, 158-159 (4th Cir. 1991) discussed the factors a court may consider in determining whether a proposed settlement should be approved. These factors include the question of whether the settlement was reached as a result of good-faith bargaining at arm’s length, without collusion, on the basis of: (1) the posture of the case at the time settlement was proposed; (2) the extent of discovery that had been conducted; (3) the circumstances surrounding the negotiations; and (4) the experience of counsel. See also Flinn v FMC Corp., 528 F.2d 1169, 1173 (4th Cir. 1975), cert denied, 424 U.S. 967 (1976).

Your Honor, if the above motion above seems confusing at first, please consider that in all this time there are people who still don’t understand the scope of the matters under consideration here, including economist consultants who’ve worked for almost a year without getting anywhere, let alone the tens of thousands of union and freelance artists and craftsmen involved working in Los Angeles and around the world.

My lawyers told they never read the foreign levy agreements either.

I have read them, as you know.

Here is what the WGAw said about this case and this plaintiff in a widely read declaration published in The Hollywood Reporter, which has a readership not much connected to non-union writers:

Is it appropriate that the Guild is collecting and disbursing foreign royalties? Why or why not? (DGA, SAG and WGA are doing this. On behalf of members and non-members. Foreign royalties are different from residuals, and are not mentioned in the collective bargaining agreements.) Is the Guild doing a good job at this? Why or why not? What if any improvement is needed?

The foreign levies program has been unfairly tarnished by critics, and more worrisomely, poorly explained to members. Foreign levies are a special tax on media colleted by 17 different countries, which for many years was given wholesale to the studios. In the late 1980s, the WGA and DGA worked together to garner 50 percent (25 percent per Guild) of that money for the members -- the creators of the media these governments taxed. This was a big win and a worthy program, one that has won some $90 million for writers.

The tarnishing occurred when a non-member filed a lawsuit against the WGA for also collecting monies belonging to non-WGA writers. The irony of this lawsuit is that the Guild never wanted this role in the first place -- the requirement to distribute money to members and non-members was imposed upon the WGA by these governments who had no interest in dividing the money themselves. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but the upshot is that the WGA is now saddled with the costly burden of tracking down non-members to give them European tax dollars. I have nothing but respect for the WGA’s role in this program, and I wish we could better educate all members and observers to what occurred.

Your honor, this is precisely what you asked Mr. Segall to assure the WGA would NOT do, and it sends a chilling message to future class action litigants, as intended.

Unions of bygone days used techniques like this to discredit and shame their opponents, but a Class Action deserves the truth and should not be subject to the kind of illegal tactics or intimidation that prompted the lawsuit to begin with.

Like the character Bud Shulberg -- whom I represent and whose heirs are owed money – said in that famous scene in ON THE WATERFRONT, a movie about union corruption, you said you would look out for the writers in my class and I plead with the court to keep its promise.

When Tony Segall fights about ‘collections” it’s really a way to avoid revealing the names of the major studios who’ve been taking the lion’s share of the artist’s money – 92.5% - nothing new to Hollywood.

What is new is a lawsuit about money which is between entities – like unions and studios – with neither side admitting who’s doing it or even who’s in charge of it, although John Wells says it’s a successful program.

John Wells says the union paid out 90 million, Neville Johnson says he got 100 million for the writers – and still no evidence of either.  None, not anything, and now my lawyers are willing to give the union another six months to stall when we all need money, including social services in LA.

Your Honor once said this case has “a bad look to it” and you were right. 

I concur with Mr. Johnson that KMPG has been working for he WGAw for years, and is the most litigated (against) major accounting firm in U.S. history.  We should not have accountants who have been defendants like the WGAw.

While Neville Johnson talks tough in the present declaration about the union it was announced in the Hollywood "trades" he's working as co-counsel with Tony Segall in a case about a writer fighting UNIVERSAL, which is also a signer of the foreign levy agreements.  This indeed has a bad look to it, and appears to be a conflict of interest, and it’s a continuation of the same game with the same players.  When the union screams in protests about revealing the “collection” they’re trying to keep the identity 21 years of partnership secret.

I believe Mr. Johnson’s statement that this court is the writer’s only hope places undue burden upon the court, if the court will excuse a writer’s observation, since the court is really dependent entirely upon what is presented to it and therefore relies profoundly on the Plaintiff’s and Defendant’s lawyers as much as their clients do.

There should be no loaded secrets or unanswered questions involving the fates of so many Americans.

As I told Judge Highberger, both sides were aware that I was not a WGAw member when that was accepted by Judge Morrow and you.

I’m not the person to say to you that Class actions are a legal tool designed by Congress to help those smaller than the institutions that harm them, who can’t afford to act alone.

Presently I am pleading under the Congress’ intention that a lead plaintiff in a class action is the Attorney General for his/her class, hiring lawyers, conducting discovery, and injured in a major way by the defendants.

Thus I am signing the release given me by Neville Johnson which removes him as my counsel and I am agreeing to substitute myself as Attorney General for my class, acting in pro per, until new counsel can be associated into my case by the court or the present counsel re-born.

Both Mr. Johnson and Mr. John Wells say the money paid out is either 100 million or 90 million which, according the usual class action standard of treble and I have tried to understand it, should mean that the lawyers divide 30 million more or less, with no complaint from the Plaintiff.

However, if Plaintiff has gotten less time from the lawyers because they were paid less, or because they wanted to help the complex court system keep the 40% savings Paul Keiesl may have helped engineer for the LA court system, then Plaintiff asks that the lawyers get full amount or whatever portion of the 40% time savings keeps this case from getting the money out and naming trusted union leaders who stole be returned.

Plaintiff hopes the court understands that he appreciates the huge amount of documents – number in the millions with thousands of plaintiffs – the court normally has to cope with.  However, there are people who need more information and help and this case has got to have been much less complex than most in terms of volume.

My lawyers are seeking to give the WGAw another six months to do what they they haven’t even begun yet after a year and haven’t done in the past six years, and the WGA has even begun to exclude the “collection” part of the foreign levy program which is the part that tells us who got the money and how much.

I realize I have not been the most popular fellow in this courtroom.  Screenwriters are notorious for being kept off movie sets, but you might say this is a reality show, as I find myself in a position never asked for, which I cannot abandon as it involves the artists who shape our culture.

Evil men cannot be maintained in high position hurting innocents no matter how hard it is to remove them.

As Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel wrote:

“You are our only hope.”

In the words of class member Tennessee Williams: Your Honor, we “have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Sincerely,

William Richert 

Class Champion assigned for this lawsuit and related cases DGA and SAG.

Cc fellow class members union and not

Attachments

signed Neville Johnson request for relief of duty

VARIETY article

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER