James Dean Estate Drops Lawsuit Against Twitter
The legal fight between the estate of James Dean and social media giant Twitter is over — at least for now.
The lawsuit, filed in February in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, concluded with a dismissal notice nearly short enough to fit into a 140-character tweet.
The dismissal was made “without prejudice,” which would allow the claims to be refiled again in the future against Twitter and users who set up social media accounts using the name and likenesses of Dean.
The court notice did not explain why attorneys representing the estate of Dean were dropping the lawsuit. Attorneys for the estate and Twitter did not respond to calls from The Indianapolis Star.
But Mark Roesler, chairman of Indianapolis-based celebrity licensing agency CMG Worldwide, which represents the Dean estate, said the dispute “had been resolved to our satisfaction for the moment.” Roesler said the unauthorized @JamesDean account has been removed from Twitter.
The dismissal appeared imminent when a federal judge issued an order last month that directed attorneys for the estate “to show cause by December 15, 2014, why this case should not be dismissed as to the John Doe defendants for failure to serve the complaint within 120 days after the filing of the complaint.”
Legal rules require targets of lawsuits to be formally notified of the action. A federal judge had put discovery — the sharing of evidence in a legal case — on hold in May until after the estate had served the complaint on the John Doe defendants.
“No showing of proper service,” said the November court order, “has been made to date.”
The person behind the unauthorized site, Roesler said, could not be located to make formal notification of the lawsuit.
“We were unable to move forward,” he said.
Roesler said the estate’s complaint was based on concerns that the unauthorized @JamesDean account could be misconstrued as an official site sanctioned by the estate.
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But Dean’s estate alleged that Twitter and the anonymous owner of @JamesDean used the actor’s name and image without authorization. Both are trademarked by James Dean Inc., which represents Dean heirs who consider his name and likeness a valuable commodity.
The lawsuit initially was filed in Hamilton Superior Court. But attorneys for Twitter, whose more than 200 million users flood cyberspace with several hundred million tweets a day, wanted it moved to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. The request was sought because of the potential amount of damages at stake and federal issues such as trademark infringement.
The transfer motion was submitted in February, one day before what would have been Dean’s 83rd birthday. To fans, however, Dean is forever frozen in time — the brooding, young, rebel movie star who died at the age of 24 in a 1955 car crash.
And that powerful image remains a highly valuable commodity nearly 60 years later, vigorously protected by CMG Worldwide. Forbes listed Dean at No. 10 on its list of the highest-earning dead celebrities of 2014, with income of about $7 million.
“CMG’s clients have valuable intellectual property vested in their name, image and likeness,” Roesler said in a statement to The Star when the lawsuit was filed.
In email exchanges with The Star in February, the man behind the @JamesDean account declined to give his name but said his account “is strictly a fan account, as can be seen from the tweets.” The account could not be found Wednesday on Twitter, but other accounts using Dean’s likeness and variations of his name did appear to remain active.
The lawsuit also named four other “John Doe” defendants who had Twitter accounts using variations on Dean’s name and his image, but the main focus was on @JamesDean because it uses the name CMG wants to use to start its own official Dean account.
