SAG Moves to Dismiss Membership First/Gang of Four “Sour Grapes” Suit – updated!
The key quote from SAG’s latest court filing:
The Gang’s real complant is that they found themselves on the losing side of a majority vote. Their candidate was not supported by the majority of SAG’s board, and they refuse to accept defeat.
Sour grapes aside, this appeal is now legally moot.
Call it the legal version of a bitch slapping. Pun intended, or not, depending upon your political perspective.
Jonathan Handel has the detailson SAG’s latest filing in the Gang of Four case.
Handel notes that the lawsuit filed agaisnt SAG and all RBD and Unite for Strength Directors by SAG President Alan Rosenberg, First VP Anne-Marie Johnson, Kent McCord and Diane “Sleepy” Ladd- the group known as the Gang of Four – continues to consume dues money SAG could be spending on something productive, like organizing.
The lawsuit, which has been rejected by each of the three courts that has considered it, was filed by the new minority after the balance of power changed in the National Board. The ousted leadership has been seeking to declare the firing of Doug Allen and the Membership First dominated TV-Theatrical negotiating commitee was illegal, because it was done by written assent, after Membership First filibustered to prevent the Board from voting on the proposal to disband the committee and fire Allen.
After the assent, the SAG National Board met and reached a vote, effectively firing Allen and disbanding the commitee again – and by an even larger margin. At the time most realized that the action by the Board effectively ended the dispute, because the claimed grounds for the lawsuit was that the firing had been illegal because it wasn’t a vote of the National Board – and now there had been one.
Despite that, the Gang of Four continued to bankroll the lawsuit, as it went up to the Appellate Court, where it got rejected. Now SAG has asked the courts to stop the case in its tracks, precisely because it is moot.
As Jonathan Handel points out, even if the judge agrees with SAG, the Gang of Four can appeal, keeping the case going on for quite some time, at considerable expense to all of us, even though the union has long ago moved on.
And the direct cost of this lawsuit to SAG – and a waste of our dues dollars – has now surpassed $110,000.
While it is theoretically possible to take this case to the California Supreme Court if the Gang of Four lose in the Court of Appeal, the path to the California Supreme Court is not an appeal. It is a petition for review, which the California Supreme Court can accept or reject. As a practical matter, the California Supreme Court only accepts a tiny fraction of the cases proposed to it via petition for review. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the Court of Appeal, where the current motion to dismiss is pending, will be the end of the line for this particular controversy.
Note that the current appeal only addresses the question whether the trial court should have granted temporary injunctive relief in early February. The underlying lawsuit is not affected by the outcome of the current appeal. However, as I have said repeatedly, I believe the underlying lawsuit is also moot, for the same reasons argued in the motion to dismiss the appeal, and it mystifies me that SAG has not acted to get rid of the underlying case in the trial court.
VG
VG, maybe SAG is willing to let the Gang of Four keep digging themselves deeper into personal debt with the lawsuit.
But you can rest assured that if they win the majority this fall, we will end up footing their bill.
My fear is even if they DON’T win the majority, they’ve already put some mechanism in place to guarantee the guild will foot their bill for this suit, no matter how expensive.
I’m wondering aloud if my dues money can be put legally into some kind of escrow account, to guarantee that NONE of it can be used to pay for Rosenberg’s folly?
Perhaps, as a members of the Screen Actors Guild, named in their suit, I can sue for damages amounting to my dues paid during their action.
Perhaps the members could bring suit against The Gang of Four to either protect their dues money (at $110,000 and climbing)or recoup their dues money.