Kelli L. Sager

Veteran high-stakes media and entertainment litigator Sager won a novel ruling from a California judge: it not defamatory to report that somebody is transgender.

A Los Angeles County judge on Sept. 1 found in favor of Sager’s client, the parent company of the National Enquirer, in an anti-SLAPP motion against Richard Simmons. The exercise guru sued the publication over a series of articles it published last year that claimed his disappearance from public life was related to his interest in pursuing transgender surgery. Simmons v. American Media Inc., BC660633 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 18, 2016).

Simmons, who said the articles cast him in a false and negative light, plans to appeal.

Sager also recently cemented a win at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for T3Media, now Wazee Digital, the primary licensing entity for the NCAA-copyrighted photos and videos. The federal district court in March 2015 dismissed a nationwide class action brought by former college athletes for misappropriation and related claims arising from the licensing of NCAA-copyrighted materials. In April, the appellate court affirmed the decision.

“Basically, the ability to license copyrighted work is governed by copyright law,” said Sager. “You can’t sue someone for misappropriation for use of a copyrighted image any more than you can sue a press photographer that takes a picture or someone and puts it in the paper.”

The T3Media case is part of a wave of litigation that arose after a group of college basketball and football players sued video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. for profiting from their names and likenesses. Sager represented the company in two of the cases. Although the high-profile suits ended in settlements, the fact that the 9th Circuit allowed the claim to advance invited a deluge of similar cases.

A year and a half later, “the tide has turned,” Sager said. Many of the copycat cases have been decided in favor of broadcasters or publishers or, in Sager’s case, T3Media. “People who have work that is protected by the First Amendment,” she said. “The popularity of those cases has now probably ended.”

Originally intent on becoming a legal reporter, Sager said she switched tracks in law school when she first became aware of her current profession.

“I had no idea that this existed as a field,” she said, “that you could represent the media and practice law.”

— Lila Seidman