(2001) Tags: Columbia
Rezec v. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.
In marketing its films, a motion picture studio advertised films by falsely portraying a person as a film critic for a newspaper and attributing to him laudatory reviews about the films. Certain film viewers filed this lawsuit seeking injunctive relief, restitution and disgorgement.
Defendant Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., released four motion pictures in 2000 and 2001 entitled “Vertical Limit,” “The Animal,” “A Knight’s Tale,” and “Hollow Man.” Without the knowledge of senior management, one of Sony’s employees, who created advertisements for these films, inserted quotations attributed to David Manning, who, according to the ad, worked for the Ridgefield Press in Ridgefield, Connecticut, as a film critic. But no one by that name worked at the Ridgefield Press, and the quoted material had not appeared in that newspaper.
An advertisement for the March 2001 release of “A Knight’s Tale” noted accurately that Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film “Two Thumbs Up” and that Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, “Forget the hard-sell generic blockbusters heading for the multiplexes. The Real Deal is coming in under the radar.” The advertisement noted falsely that David Manning of the Ridgefield Press said, “Heath Ledger is this year’s Hottest New Star.”