Opinion
No. 04 Civ. 6997 (GEL).
April 26, 2006
Gregory Hudson, pro se. Richard Dannay and Thomas Kjellberg, Cowan Liebowitz Latman, P.C., New York, NY, for defendants.
OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff Gregory Hudson brings this action for copyright infringement and related claims against a number of defendants, alleging principally that defendants copied elements of a 1999 motion picture, Life, from a work he had written called Bronx House. Defendants moved to dismiss on the ground of, inter alia, res judicata, arguing that plaintiff's claims are precluded by a decision in an earlier case filed by plaintiff against many of the same parties. See Hudson v. Universal Pictures Corp., No. 03 Civ. 1008 (FB) (LB), 2004 WL 1205762 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 29, 2004) ("Hudson II"), aff'd sub nom. Hudson v. Imagine Entm't Corp., 128 Fed. Appx. 178 (2d Cir. 2005), cert. denied, 2006 WL 985653 (Apr. 17, 2006). On February 16, 2006, the Honorable Theodore H. Katz, United States Magistrate Judge, to whom the case had been referred for general pre-trial management, issued a thorough and well-reasoned Report and Recommendation ("RR") recommending that the motion be granted. Plaintiff in due course filed objections to the RR. Having carefully considered the record, the RR, and plaintiff's objections, and reviewed the issues presented by the motion de novo, the Court overrules the objections, adopts the careful and well-reasoned RR as the opinion of the Court, and grants the motion.
The facts are laid out fully and accurately in the RR. In theHudson II litigation in the Eastern District of New York, plaintiff claimed that Life was copied from a work of his called No Harm, No Foul. Midway through the litigation, he began to assert claims relating to Bronx House. Although the Magistrate Judge initially rejected plaintiff's effort to inject claims relating to Bronx House into the litigation, the record is clear that plaintiff nevertheless persisted in presenting evidence relating to Bronx House to the court, specifically asserting, in his opposition to defendants' summary judgment motion, that portions of Life were "copied from [his] stage play entitled, Bronx House," and referencing an exhibit setting forth similarities between the two works. (Kjellberg Decl. Ex. J at 10.) In ruling on the defendants' motion for summary judgment, Judge Block first ruled that "no reasonable jury could find a substantial similarity between the protected elements of No Harm, No Foul and Life." Hudson II, 2004 WL 1205762, at *4. However, far from rejecting plaintiff's Bronx House claims as irrelevant to the litigation, the Court then went on to note that plaintiff "also asserts that Life was copied from . . . [plaintiff's] other play Bronx House," and to rule that this contention was "meritless." Id.
Plaintiff claims that he did this for the limited (if somewhat inscrutable) purpose of "avoid[ing] losing credibility with" the Magistrate Judge in Hudson II (P. Mem. Objection to RR at 10), or "for the sole purpose of getting a `written response' from the Court and the opposition verifying and clearly stating that Bronx House was not part of Hudson II." (Id. at 14; emphasis in original.) But whatever plaintiff thought he was doing at the time, or however plaintiff would like to spin it now, the undisputed fact is that plaintiff submitted to the court, after the court's attempt to rule Bronx House out of the case, a comparative analysis of elements of Life and Bronx House that was before the court when Hudson II was decided.
There is thus no question that plaintiff presented his claims regarding Bronx House to the court in Hudson II, in spite of the court's previous interim procedural rulings that the claims were beyond the scope of his complaint, and that the court then proceeded to rule on them.
Plaintiff's only significant objection to the RR is the argument that Judge Block did not really adjudicate his claim that Life was copied from Bronx House because the case had not been fully and fairly presented. Part of his argument can be dismissed as a mere verbal quibble: plaintiff argues that Judge Block never says that he "adjudicated" the claim, only that he "reviewed" and "considered" it. (P. Mem. Objection to RR at 16-17.) This is unpersuasive; the opinion in Hudson II is crystal clear that the court "finds" the claim that Life was copied from Bronx House "meritless." 2004 WL 1205762, at *4.
Plaintiff is on more substantive ground in arguing that the adjudication regarding Bronx House should not preclude further litigation because he did not have an adequate opportunity inHudson II to develop his claims. (P. Mem. Objection to RR at 18-20.) Because the Magistrate Judge had resisted plaintiff's attempts to bring Bronx House into the litigation, Hudson claims, he did not obtain adequate discovery regarding his Bronx House claims, and was able to present the court only with a sketchy summary of his contentions, and not with a full record. Unlike his verbal quibble, this argument presents a substantive claim that plaintiff was treated unfairly. But the argument that a judicial decision was unjust or infected by procedural error warrants an appeal, not a second lawsuit attempting to present the same claims to a different court. And indeed, plaintiff, clearly aware that Judge Block had addressed and rejected his Bronx House claims, pursued the argument that the Bronx House claims had not received full and fair consideration.
First, plaintiff moved for rehearing, arguing among other things that because his attorney had mistakenly failed to amend his complaint to include Bronx House, "evidence demonstrat[ing] that defendants copied from Bronx House and No Harm, No Foul . . . [had] not been presented and discovery has not been completed . . ., and therefore a summary judgment for the defendants is improper." (Kjellberg Decl. Ex. L at 10.) Then, on appeal, plaintiff further argued that the admission into evidence of the full script of Bronx House at trial would have warranted a verdict for plaintiff on the claims at issue in Hudson II. (Id. Ex. M at 18). The Second Circuit, however, summarily rejected this along with Hudson's other arguments as "without merit." 128 Fed. Appx. at 179.
In short, whatever rulings may have been made in the discovery phase of the Eastern District litigation in Hudson II, plaintiff affirmatively presented to the court in response to the summary judgment motion in that case the claim that Life was copied from Bronx House as well as from No Harm, No Foul, and when the court in that case rejected the claim, he proceeded to argue, on rehearing and on appeal, that he had been treated unfairly because (arguably confused or misled by the discovery rulings) he had only presented a summary of the alleged similarities between Life and Bronx House and the court had not seen the full script of the latter. Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals rejected that argument, and the District Court's finding that the claim that Life was copied from Bronx House was "meritless" was affirmed on appeal. Whether that finding was right or wrong, fairly rendered or procedurally flawed, it is now res judicata and plaintiff may not relitigate the claim in this Court.
Moreover, even assuming, arguendo, that the plaintiff did not actually present a claim based on Bronx House in theHudson II litigation, he could have and should have presented such a claim in his Hudson II complaint, given the close relation of the Bronx House claim to the No Harm, No Foul claim. (RR 30-31); see Monahan v. New York City Dep't of Corrections, 214 F.3d 275, 285 (2d Cir. 2000) (explaining that res judicata may apply where "the claims asserted in the subsequent action were, or could have been, raised in the prior action"); see also Pike v. Freeman, 266 F.3d 78, 91 (2d Cir. 2001) (explaining that "the `could have been' language of the [res judicata standard] is something of a misnomer," because "[t]he question is not whether the applicable procedural rules permitted assertion of the claim in the first proceeding[, but] whether the claim was sufficiently related to the claims that were asserted in the first proceeding that it should have been asserted in that proceeding").
Plaintiff also presents a contract claim based on No Harm, No Foul. This Court agrees with and adopts the RR's conclusion that this claim is also barred by res judicata. (RR 12, 24-26.)
For these reasons, plaintiff's objections to the RR are overruled, the RR is adopted as the opinion of the Court, the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint or for summary judgment is granted, and the complaint is dismissed.
SO ORDERED.