A federal jury on Wednesday awarded "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" creator Celador International more than $269 million in damages, ruling that Disney and its family of TV companies failed to "perform the obligations of the rights agreement" of their contract that brought the game show to the U.S.
The jury awarded the British producer $260,238,024.00 for revenues from the network license fee, and $9,193,774.00 in revenues from merchandising. Jurors leaving the courtroom declined to speak with TheWrap.
Within minutes, Disney indicated its intention to appeal.
"We believe this verdict is fundamentally wrong and will aggressively seek to have it reversed," read the Disney statement.
"The jury made the wrong decision," Disney CEO Robert Iger told TheWrap on Thursday when asked about the verdict at the moguls' retreat going on in Sun Valley, Idaho. He wouldn't comment further.
The U.K. company won both its claims – breach of contract and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in what has been a six-year legal pursuit of Disney and their TV family of ABC, Buena Vista Television and Valleycrest Productions.
"It's sound sensible verdict when you consider what was at stake," lead Celador lawyer Roman Silberfeld told TheWrap after the verdict. Of the damages, he added, "while a big number, it is within the low range of what we were asking."
There's a lot more paperwork to come. Almost immediately, Disney lawyers will likely file and argue verdict motions before the court. They could ask the court to put aside the verdict or find significant error in it and demand a new trial. If the judge denies those motions, the company will move to appeal the verdict.
A senior Disney official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TheWrap that the case was too complex legally and financially for a jury to sort through -- jurors somehow believed that Celador was deserving of ad revenue, which the original contract was clear on.
"It'll be another two to three years before the appeal is done," noted Silberfeld.
The case, which Judge Virginia Phillips called a “dispute about a contract” when the trial started almost a month ago, became an investigation into the slippery world of Hollywood dealmaking and the black hole of Hollywood accounting.
Celador, which first filed suit in 2004, contended that Disney and its TV parnters conducted a series of slippery deals and secret arrangements that left the “Millionaire” creators short hundreds of millions in expected revenues and profits from the hit game show when it came to America and ABC in 1999 In his closing argument on June Celador lead lawyer Roman Silberfeld poignantly called the maneuverings on the part of the Disney family “a shell game.”
Disney was never really able to shake that hustler’s image in testimony from Celador boss Paul Smith and others about its shifty hands with “Millionaire’s” profits.
Celador sought damages of around $279 million to $395 million in fees and revenues, based on two separate sets of accounting methodologies the company had commissioned and the number of episodes of the show, and around $11 million in lost merchandising revenues.
