DECLARATION OF WILLIAM RICHERT: POINTS, FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS 2005-2014:

 

On August 22, 2012, after challenging Judge Wiley over his demand for additional fees the lawyer for the three major Hollywood "labor" unions, -- Neville Johnson -- walked off from the class action cases he filed and hasn’t returned. It is the duty of the Lead Plaintiff to replace him, and we respectfully ask the court to ensure that the rights of the court-certified litigant are protected post-settlement.

 

This class action is especially important to the film world as it involves thousands of non-union independent screenwriters who often devote their lives to a single film, and should not see their royalties taken by unions or studios, as has been done for decades without any accounting.

 

Concerning my own years since 2005 as both witness and plaintiff representing non-union writers: I can verifiably state that almost every word presented to the Honorable Judges Morrow, Carl J. West, William Highberger, and now yourself, Hon. Judge John Wiley Jr. – has been has been false, as in fellow class member Mary McCarthy’s (deceased) observation about fellow class member Lillian Hellman (deceased), who founded the Writers Guild of America: “every word she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘but.’”

 

It is said that the Devil’s biggest fraud is his ability to convince the gullible that he doesn’t exist, or that his counsel is in the best interest of the hopeful, i.e. “Usual Suspects” written by class member Christopher McQuarrie.

 

Starting September, 2005, I’ve been the class writer and witness to devilish deeds and intentions in three courts, and I know the details. 2005 was the year the WGA Board voted to place all “cy pres” or undeliverable funds into the treasury. No Judge was ever told this, even though the courts had full jurisdiction over the “cy pres” money, which Tony Segall gave in 2012 to the Actor’s Fund, never acknowledging a deception that no doubt included other unaccounted-for funds.

 

One example of a gang of lawyers’ devious and subtle fabrication was presented in 2012 to the court of Judge Wiley by Tony Segall, Daniel Schecter and my class lawyers, Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesl with Studio Exec. – Labor Counsel Robert Hadl uber-lawyering to them all from the visitor’s gallery.

 

Uncorrected by any of the informed lawyers present in the room, Neville Johnson asserted that that the entire lawsuit is about Hollywood’s “industry governance” as if it were merely an insider fraternal dispute about supervision of a standard process.

 

NEVILLE JOHNSON: “THIS LAWSUIT CHALLENGED THE ADEQUACY OF WGA’S COLLECTION, PROCESSING AND DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN LEVIES TO WRITERS, INCLUDING WGA MEMBERS AS WELL AS NON-MEMBERS.”

 

Actually, what RICHERT VS. WGA is really about is theft of copyright; theft of royalties; an ongoing scheme outside any kind of writer-approved union/studio deal lasting a quarter century and counting; a pernicious union/studio criminal piracy enterprise involving billions of dollars.

 

Tony Segall, Patric Verrone, David Young, Carl Gottlieb et. al, denied any wrongdoing or prior knowledge, of course, along with the Board of Directors at the WGA, but this is the shield an expensive settlement can provide, offering the defendants a temporary stay from the inevitable march of justice.

 

Although Neville Johnson left the courtroom in a huff, as if he were the loser, that was part of the plan: to the class members, it appears the courts had washed its hands of the lawsuits, creating a kind of writers’ Pontius Pilot of the Judge.

 

And while Dan and Tony gave each other “high fives” exiting the court, they were not excluding Neville in their crony exultation; after all, they paid him 1.6 million for four hours of depositions, along with his downtown parking fees.

 

To those labor union attorneys who were over the moon with their success, the non-union freelance writers nationwide say "not so fast" -- there are still “victories” in the settlement, as Judge Wiley said, and they need to be taken -- especially for non-union writers.

 

While the Richert VS. WGA settlement may have given up the distribution of 7 and 1/2 % of U.S. foreign royalties, along with U.S. copyright protections, to the aegis of WGA, I signed the settlement along with objector Eric Hughes specifically for a “full payout” and in return for a clause allowing a collateral lawsuit for the identification and location of the rest of the money, thus leading to action to reclaim the 92% of those royalties hitherto given by the union to the studios in secret, plus interest.

 

That studio grab exceeds one billion dollars. Nobody knows how much belongs to non union authors and screenwriters.

 

The settlement I signed also binds 20 thousand WGA union writers to a deal hardly any ever read or knew about.

Before any member got the settlement offer, official messages from the WGA to its membership described the settlement as “inaccurate” and the settlement itself that was made out to be “court approved,” as sent to the members to imply it was good and anyhow already irreversible, favoring the union. [The WGA also said I was a member EMERITUS IN ARREARS, a made-up category – until after settlement was signed, when they suddenly declared I was a “non-member” -- all false and misleading. Even today, very few union members know that they only get 7.5% of their full due. And I’ll bet almost none of the majority non-union screenwriters have any notion at all of money taken from them. For a long time I felt that the WGA membership had behaved in a cowardly manner, with virtually none offering to help in the case, THEIR case; then I read what the union leadership sent out to the membership, and saw they were not cowards at all, but victims.]

 

My recent $1,387.46 WGA royalty check – signed by Carl Gottlieb -- should have been the full $12,000 that the collection societies originally sent in my name, for example (as I calculate the total including the other 92.5% the WGA gave to the studios.) This amount comes nowhere near what is owed for other films that were collected for me over the years since THE HAPPY HOOKER (non WGA.)

 

More commercially successful writers are owed much more.

 

The WILLIAM RICHERT VERSUS THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA settlement was not designed to inexplicably and secretly give 92% of writers’ royalties to the studios (or 85 or even 50 percent as the union presently claims) -- in perpetuity, or “forever” -- which is what happened to my royalties for ‘THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK” along with my other movies [though not ‘forever’ we vow.]

 

Considering the stakes of copyright and performance rights extinguished/controlled by a small group of insiders, involving billions, it is amazing to me that so little has been written in the LA press about this matter. But then I have heard that the WGA intimidates those who do write about it.

 

The major Hollywood studios have no rights whatsoever to any claim of royalties generated by private copyrighted property like THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, which was defiantly non-WGA and non-DGA and certainly not done under any “work for hire” studio “pre-nuptials” or CBA/MBA union regulations.

 

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, via this lawsuit, becomes an index of connected information on the unions, studios and collecting societies themselves.

 

Taking royalties from my privately financed independent film is the same kind of piracy that the studios and unions decry; here it’s them doing it first. I used my money and the money of my friends to produce this movie, which took almost a decade to make and distribute, and the first real money to be returned to us -- however small – shall not be taken by others without accounting for it.

 

FRAUD AT INCEPTION

 

While this year, in 2014, the WGA continues to misrepresent the facts of the lawsuit, even excluding Mexico from its list of collecting countries, while continue defame the lead plaintiff, WGA lawyer Emma Leheny outright lied at the outset to Judge Morrow in the Federal court in 2007, from whence the falsehoods flowed into the other courts. She soon mysteriously disappeared from the lawsuit -- .

 

FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE MORROW TRANSCRIPT FEBRUARY 5, 2007:

 

THE COURT: But these plaintiffs aren’t members of these labor unions, are they?

 

MS. LEHENY: That’s incorrect. it is our position that Mr. Richert, the lead plaintiff in the Writers Guild case, is and was a member of the writers Guild. I would also ask that attention be redirected to what we believe is the correct analysis, whether work is produced pursuant to a Collective Bargaining Agreement, not whether an individual voluntarily chooses to be a dues paying member of a union. In other words, when I sign on to write a film and 14 it is under the writers Guild agreement –

 

THE COURT: You know, let me just interrupt you here…as the court understands the allegations of the complaint, the allegations of the complaint are that these two individuals are not members of the two unions… But they are not performing this work pursuant to a Collective Bargaining Agreement. They have a right that arose under foreign law based on work they did as nonunion members.

 

So how does that implicate the Collective Bargaining Agreement, or not the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but this voluntary settlement effectively that the Guild's entered into with the companies? It's like you sort of arrogated to yourself the right and the power to make deals on behalf of these plaintiffs who say that they are not members of your unions.

 

MS. LEHENY: Okay. It is a fact that Mr. Richert's films that were at issue here were produced under the Writers Guild contract.

 

The above is totally FALSE, and is a blatant deceit to the Judge and she knows it and all the lawyers appearing in front of the Judge know it, too. I was not told of the Federal Court hearing or invited to attend, otherwise I would have protested that day as I did later on.

 

WGA CFO Don Gor continued the deception both in his deposition and in his court declaration: "William Richert is now and has always been during the course of this lawsuit a member of the WGA."

 

AFTER THE SETTLEMENT, THE WGA RETRACTS THE RUSE IT USED TO CONTROL ITS MEMBERSHIP:

 

“The lawsuit was filed in 2005 by a non-member.” States www.wga.org. 2014-- CHRIS HEYSER.

 

Ms. Leheny lied in 2007 in front of the court and in front of the complicit lawyers about my membership and other issues. In possession of my files, she knew that only a few of my films were produced under the WGA contract, and none originated under a studio contract. The majority of my negatives are private property, and copyrighted. Ms. Leheny also told the court I was a MEMBER “EMERITUS IN ARREARS,” a name I rather puckishly enjoy, but which is as misleading since there is no such category and WGA expert Eric Hughes has the documents to prove it. (Besides, Emeritus members do not pay dues). These statements were as bogus as all else the lawyers from both sides have told the courts all these years. Ms. Leheny (who now works for the teachers’ union) goes on to state:\

 

MS. LEHENY: Here the plaintiff’s claims are squarely addressed by the foreign levy agreement, which is the applicable labor contract.

 

Ms. Leheny refers to a “labor contract” which is clearly and definitively NOT a factual description of the secret foreign levy “agreement” which says the exact opposite – declaring that the entire agreement is “Outside Collective Bargaining.” The 1990 “Secret Agreement” shows that is not true.

 

Then, in that same initial hearing, Dan Schecter chimes in with a set of lies of his own:

 

MR. SCHECTER: These unions over a course of years at great expense negotiated with management, negotiated with the foreign jurisdictions that were collecting the moneys and now they hold money as a consequence of that, both for the membership and non-members. So to assess whether they acted wrongfully, you need to look at Section 3 of the foreign levy agreement.

 

Actually, the Judge needed to look at section “6”, of the agreement, not “3.” Mr. Schecter was counting on a Federal Judge being too busy to know all the provisions of a “unique” small typeface 1990 secret deal.

 

MR. SCHECTER: It is only through the Guild’s exercise of the collective bargaining authority and the collective bargaining role that they go out and they make claims on behalf of the author’s share. Wha? -- Nonsense, this is, and it has been perpetuated as the “gravitas” of this case through 3 judges and nine years of litigation; all under the Cromwellian Thumb of a former lawyer for Lew Wasserman, Robert Hadl.

 

MR. SHECTER: It gets pretty thorny. Not even the plaintiffs submit that the first day that a dollar comes in it has to be paid out. There’s some period of time that’s its reasonable for any entity that reviews millions of dollars to figure out who it’s for.

 

17 YEARS of “figuring out” at the time of this hearing? Now it’s been 24 years, and there is still no accounting of any non-member’s checks at any of these unions except the checks I have got.

 

Boy oh boy, this may not belong in a legal motion, but here is B.S. at its most stench-full – and I have a catalogue of this artful dodger’s whoppers dropped in three different courts – again, Mr. Schecter knows that it’s actually 3 different unions taking foreign levies , not two – since Mr. Schechter has already been representing SAG’s foreign levies – and he also knows that there is no “collective bargaining” in this case, especially for non-union writers who do not “bargain” their copyrights away without knowing it, and whose copyrights cannot be legally taken that way, either.

 

[It is bizarre also to read testimony about “workplace rules” and “rates of pay” for writers like me; nothing like these conditions have ever applied to me or my peers.]

 

WHAT THE JUDGE COULD NOT KNOW

 

No lawyer in the courtroom told Judge Wiley the SAG contract had expired, or that the “cy pres” was meant to be given by the Judge and Court; not the lawyers involved in the case; preposterously, nobody talked about the WGA Board giving the WGA treasurer control of foreign levies "cy press" way back in 2005. ...Was that because of my lawsuit?

 

Neville Johnson to Judge Wiley, May 16, 2012: “I will say that we are pleased to say that the WGA has been cooperating with our consultants and they are in the process of finalizing a press release and getting certain moneys paid out to a charity in accordance with the terms of the settlement…

 

Please note that Mr. Johnson makes no mention of “cy pres” at this hearing, or the next hearing. But note also that the WGA wrote a press release and made a big show of giving 1 million to the actor’s fund that should have been done by the court, not the lawyers:

 

From Amended Settlement, Judge West, 2011: “In addition to the provisions in paragraph 7(d) of the Amended Settlement Agreement relating to the payment of certain un- distributable funds attributable to non-covered works, the court shall retain jurisdiction over any undistributable funds attributable to works written under any WGAW collective bargaining agreement, including the applicability, if any, of the California Unclaimed Property law. code Civ.. Proc. PR OC. 1500 – 1582, or the payment of such funds to a cy press recipient

 

[How did this CY PRES amount come to be one million or 1/157th million of the total foreign levy amount when for years the lawyers told the judges that delays in sending foreign levies were because of computer problems or missing names – yet this One Mil is less than one half of one percent of the “distributed” money of 157 million – or was that money really distributed? What about the tens of thousands of checks that were shredded according to WGA employees? This is nowhere reflected in the audit. Where are the rest of my checks for non-union films, taken without my knowing? Can THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK have gotten foreign levies only starting 2012 after 11 years in the marketplace? What about the checks from 1974? -- And if all money has been accounted for, where is it? This is WGA-Gibberish accounting. The WGA hired the accounting firm KPMG as defendants hiring their own cover-up, and the class consultant Don Jasko made his own separate deal with Don Gor, the Chief Financial Officer at the WGA. How can these relationships not be espied as consensual fraud?]

 

My recent checks from the WGA for “IRON MASK” are notably the first and only royalties I have received in the 15 years the guild has been accepting them for my films. (They’ve collected on LAW AND DISORDER since 1974; THE HAPPY HOOKER shortly thereafter.)

 

After nine years of litigation and numberless requests, these Carl Gottlieb checks are the first-ever evidence the WGA was taking money of non-union members and not accounting for it . -- And they are not accounting for the total “in full” as demanded by the settlement.

 

Not only are the foreign levy accountings nonexistent, but also the overall audit “numbers” do not add up in any consistent way, which is not good for numbers.

 

NUMBERS IN WHIPLASH: In 2010 Tony Segall said the WGA had a sum of $25.30 million “due to members.” But then suddenly, in 2011, it says it paid out $104 million to 9000 writers; but wait -- in 2013 that number rises to 157 million “collected” – hold on: back in 2004 the union was only holding 230,000 for members in residuals/foreign levies – except that number jumped to 4 million in 2004 and then in 2005 the WGA was saying that “funds held in trust for members and Undeliverable funds” totaled around $24 million in the unions “trust” accounts.

 

Perplexingly, these low foreign levy numbers were from those giddy profitable pre-strike years prior to 2007, which were the high earning years for writer DVD sales, before there were no more good movies to sell DVDs partly due to the strike.

 

At the wga.org there is no accounting whatsoever for any of the money the non-profit WGAw accepted for non-union writers and split with the studios.

 

For U.S. authors and screenwriters who do not want to work or create under labor union jurisdiction, this scenario is closer in movie lingo to 12 YEARS AS A SLAVE than NORMA RAE. The unions portray these royalties to the court as if they were taken from the studios and given to the writers -- but the very opposite is true. These billions were diverted carefully by the WGA from both the non-union writers to the coffers of the union and the studios via the offices of Don Gor at the WGAw under the direction of Robert Hadl and Carl Gottlieb, among others.

 

If you look at the publications the WGA chose to inform America’s non-union freelance screenwriters about a pro-union class action settlement – it’s laughable, with a satiric ha-ha for the 90,000 –plus freelance writers the WGA took money for – then didn’t pay out. There is a criminal category for this behavior that the settlement narrowly avoided in favor of the union; till now.

 

The ads meant to inform America’s screenwriters about their class action lawsuit were placed for any eye-blink in VARIETY – how many free or “free lance” writers read this Hollywood insider paper? -- Also the controlled settlement notice went to “Written-by” – which is a WGA union-only publication that freelancers have no real access to whatsoever. Now then, how about U.S. writers looking at “UKDAILY” for a settlement notice about their money? This kind of duplicitous dealing may not be contempt of court, but it is contempt for writers, and the plaintiff class.

 

Further, and alarming: as America’s writers get checks from the WGAw, they are becoming “data” within the union’s memory banks and the studios it consorts with. This is antithetical to the freedom of writers in general from invasive practices.

 

It is an outrage of unknown proportions that union/studio accountants and lawyers have taken and divided millions of dollars from non-union writers in almost every state of the union. It may have been explicable for them to do so after first making their deal with the studios in 1990-- but fifteen years of concealment and obfuscation and check shredding means stealing, not finding.\

 

I am the last man standing in this lawsuit to represent the unrepresented freelance screenwriters and authors in the U.S. and it is my duty to seek adequate counsel, strategic helpers, and to alert writers about a massive secret union jurisdictional grab, and to the fact we are now and will in the limitless digital future be on union studio databases with personal and IRS and professional information they have no legal rights to -- except by the protecting dictates of this settlement, which is not being enforced.

 

Like thousands of others in my class of writers, I have other films to make, non-union as well as union. If this settlement is legally enforced within its four walls of deliberation and costly adjudication, and we exercise our rights to sue the unions and studios for splitting the money to begin with, in the future no studio shall have the right to take our royalties without our knowledge and consent. The nearly decade long ordeal that resulted in these class settlements are not like a Seinfeld episode -- about “nothing.” But to represent our rights within the settlement, it’s essential that the class have a lawyer who is “super” [not a super lawyer, an internet accolade which is for sale] -- a classy class lawyer, who speaks in the language of the courts and the law.(Seinfeld writers are in my class too although they are WGA members.)

 

It is my fault I admit that my presence in the courtroom was not as auspicious as if I were Tom Wolfe or old acquaintances and class members like Norman Mailer (deceased) or Truman Capote (deceased) or my pal Paddy Chayefsky (deceased) – not to mention Milos Forman -- any of these writers might have done a better job as class rep in both literary appraisals of the worth of the lawsuit and the chicanery of the players: unions not caring about members, lawyers not caring about clients, studios hiding behind studio walls -- maybe Upton Sinclair would’ve been the man for the job. It’s really about slaughter behind walls.

 

My friends and collaborators John Huston and Richard Condon would have stood up and been heard, for sure. -- Maybe even my famous and revered author contemporaries Don Delillo and Chris Buckley would speak out if they knew about this; both in my class, both with novels adapted by me for the screen. Too bad I’m blacklisted and unable to film them. (see attached.)

 

I am only one of the thousands of earnest original screenwriters whose legacy was taken by a thieving union, but all it takes, as your Honor said in the last hearing, is “One voice puts us on the record.”

 

Instead of receiving justice from a lawsuit this pleader believed in, our basic constitutional rights have been wrapped up and snuffed out in a legal connivance-- almost!-- by Hollywood “super-lawyers”. They may get top billing in the LA Journal and treat certain Judges to lunches, but Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel are really high-echelon contingency chasers who commonly profit from folks like me, who just aren’t quite hefty enough fame-wise or rich enough money-wise to get the attention of lawyers who put principles before profits.