Samaha, part two?
New documents lead to request for retrial
In papers filed last week in federal court in Santa Ana, Samaha alleged newly discovered documents show Intertainment head Barry Baeres lied about the budgets of films and hyperinflated the numbers when he sold rights to subdistributors.
The new documents came to light during discovery this year in the arbitration among Intertainment; Comerica, the bank that made the loans to Franchise to produce the films; Franchise; and two completion bond companies, which have since settled. Bank officials Morgan Rector and Jared Underwood also were sued. In the arbitration, Intertainment claims Comerica (formerly Imperial Bank) knew Franchise was inflating the budgets it gave to Intertainment and had a duty to inform Intertainment.
Last June, German distrib Intertainment finally presented its fraud case against Franchise and Samaha to a jury. The distributor claimed it had been defrauded into paying on wildly inflated budgets, so that instead of paying 47% of the budget, as the companies' agreement called for, Intertainment ended up paying most of the costs for films such as "Get Carter" and "The Whole Nine Yards."
Oral agreement
Samaha's defense was that the budgets were inflated as part of a secret oral deal with Baeres, who knew Franchise had no other source of financing and desperately wanted the films. Despite numerous red flags, Baeres claimed he had no knowledge and no motive to agree to the inflated budgets. The jury sided with Baeres and awarded $77 million in compensatory damages and $29 million in punitive damages.
Despite its win against Franchise, Intertainment is badly in need of a deep pocket, since Franchise declared bankruptcy shortly after the trial, and it's impossible to determine how much money Samaha has personally. Intertainment is seeking $100 million in the Comerica arbitration.
While the new documents don't directly show Baeres knew Franchise was inflating the budgets, the new trial brief contends Baeres knew and didn't care that Samaha was inflating the budgets because Baeres was getting the money back from subdistributors on his own hyperinflated budgets.
The brief also contends new documents show Hypobank, Inertainment's lending bank, agreed to waive $14 million owed by Intertainment, in addition to the amount the jury was told already was forgiven. The jury was instructed that the total amount forgiven must be subtracted from damages.
Information overload
The brief claims the new documents are among 12,000 pages of documents and 27,000 emails that turned up during the Comerica arbitration that should have been turned over in the federal case.
The new trial brief is one of several pending post-trial motions. New trial motions are rarely granted. Samaha attorney Richard Schirtzer said he is planning to appeal, unless he wins the new trial motion.
