Charles v. Seinfeld

Background

Christian Charles sued Jerry Seinfeld and several companies associated with the production and distribution of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Charles claimed an interest in the show based on his work producing a treatment and helping shoot the pilot. The court had previously dismissed his claims as untimely under the Copyright Act’s three-year limitations period.

The earlier ruling found that Charles knew no later than 2012 that Seinfeld disputed Charles’s claimed ownership interest because Seinfeld had rejected Charles’s requests for backend compensation and later distributed the show without crediting him. Charles filed suit in 2018, more than five years after that notice. The Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal, and the Supreme Court denied Charles’s request for review.

Seinfeld then sought attorneys’ fees under Section 505 of the Copyright Act. The court had referred the fee motion to Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker, who recommended denying it. Seinfeld objected to that recommendation.

Reasoning on Fees

Section 505 permits a court to require the losing party in a copyright case to pay the prevailing party’s attorneys’ fees, but a fee award is discretionary rather than automatic. The court gave substantial weight to whether Charles’s legal position was objectively reasonable—that is, whether it had a reasonable factual or legal basis. The court could also consider whether the claims were frivolous, the motivation for bringing them, and whether fees were needed to promote compensation or deter improper litigation.

The court concluded that Charles’s claims were not objectively reasonable. Under controlling Second Circuit precedent, a copyright ownership claim accrues when the claimant learns that someone else disputes the claimed ownership. Charles knew of the dispute by 2012 but waited more than five years to sue, so the claims were plainly untimely.

Charles relied on Everly v. Everly, a later Sixth Circuit decision concerning an author’s right to terminate a prior transfer of copyright. The court held that Everly addressed a different type of claim: an authorship claim in which copyright ownership was not disputed and the author sought to exercise termination rights. Charles’s case was an ownership dispute, not a termination-of-transfers case. The court therefore found that Everly did not provide a reasonable basis for Charles’s claims.

The court also found that other factors supported awarding fees. It described the lawsuit as appearing opportunistic because Charles sued years after his work on the pilot and after Seinfeld reached a major distribution deal. The court also considered Seinfeld’s repeated warnings that the claims were time-barred and that fees might be sought, as well as the litigation costs associated with multiple dismissal motions and a motion to strike an overlength filing.

Ruling and Next Steps

Judge Alison J. Nathan sustained Seinfeld’s objections to the magistrate judge’s recommendation and granted Seinfeld’s motion for attorneys’ fees. The court did not yet decide the amount of the award. It ordered Charles to file, within two weeks, a brief of no more than ten pages addressing the amount, and allowed Seinfeld to file a reply of no more than five pages within one week after Charles’s submission.