Julie Ann Shepard

Toward the end of 2022, Julie Ann Shepard won judgments of $51.6 million for a group of major film studios and $52.5 million for a film investor.

The fact that both judgments were defaults did not make them easy wins. "In some ways, that made [them] even more challenging," Shepard said. "The courts are very ... protective" of defendants who are absent. "They act a little bit in their stead in terms of challenging what positions you're taking."

For the $51.6 million win in November, the defendants simply stopped appearing after nearly two years of litigation. Shepard represented Columbia, Paramount, Disney, Warner, Universal and Amazon in a lawsuit accusing Nitro TV of pirating movies. The judge "was very engaged in the argument," and eventually awarded the maximum amount per work. Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. v. Galindo, 2:20-cv-03129 (C.D. Cal., filed April 3, 2020).

"Piracy is just a rampant problem for the studios and the content creators," she said. "The seriousness needs to be reflected in the ... the per work award." Shepard and her team are now seeking to enforce the judgment.

The $52.5 million win in December included $25 million in punitive damages and $1 million in attorneys' fees. She represented a Japanese e-commerce company that had invested about $23 million in two brothers' film production companies. But when it came time to collect, the brothers "moved the money around" and didn't pay, Shepard said. The two sides litigated for about two-and-a-half years until the defendants' third set of attorneys dropped out. At that point, the court entered the default. Rakuten Inc. v. The H Collective Inc., 21STCV04527 (L.A. Sup. Ct., filed Feb. 4, 2021).

Shepard is set to go to trial in June and September this year, and neither will end in default, she said. In the first, she represents StudioCanal, which had licensed the U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to the 2015 film "Legend" to Cross Creek Pictures. "They have not paid one penny," she said about Cross Creek.

She previously won a $5 million judgment against the company, and the current litigation deals with enforcement. StudioCanal S.A.S. v. Cross Creek Releasing Co. 1, 20STCV08678 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed March 2, 2020).

In the September trial, she is defending podcast company Wondery in a breach of contract suit brought by comedian Bobby Lee. Her client dropped Lee and his TigerBelly podcast under their contract's morals clause because of a story Lee had told that could be interpreted as describing sex with an underage prostitute. "It was beyond the pale in my client's view," she said. TigerBelly 2 LLC v. Wondery LLC, 23STCV11831 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed May 25, 2023).

-- Don DeBenedictis