Sonny Barger Productions v. Home Box Office ('HBO'), et al.

Photo credit: Dieter Rebmann

The production company owned and controlled by Sonny Barger (inset), the legendary founder and conspicuous spokesman of the Oakland Hells Angels motorcycle club just sued HBO. Barger also named two other defendants in the lawsuit: a production company, and writer, director and producer Michael Tolkin for their alleged roles in a fictional TV series and pilot that Barger inspired, co-developed, and pitched to HBO.

According to the lawsuit, "[b]eginning in 2002, [Barger's production company] developed a fiction franchise first introduced as a prospective series of books and intended for adaptation in film and/or television."

Four years later Barger maintains, that on behalf of his production company, he "orally agreed with Defendant Tolkin to co-develop, co-author and co-produce a television pilot and/or series based on" a number of novels that Barger wrote under a written collaboration agreement with Keith Zimmerman and Kent Zimmerman, but to which he held all legal rights. According to the lawsuit, Tolkin was "engaged by Defendant HBO to develop and produce at least two series projects for television."

In March 2007, Barger contends, Tolkin allegedly promised to "act in good faith" with him on the HBO project, but refused to sign any written agreement to clarify and formalize the nature of their business relationship.

Tolkin gave HBO "a sixteen-page outline or treatment entitled 1%" in mid-June 2007 that depicted a fictional, lawless motorcycle club in the southwest, and delivered a draft script to HBO one month later.

Barger charges that in April 2008, "HBO refused to acknowledge [his] contributions or authorship" to the prospective HBO series, "asserting instead that the 1% Script is an original work of...Tolkin."

As soon as Barger learned that a Variety reported Barger cast in the fictional 1% motorcycle gan TV series, he sued for injunctive and declaratory relief, as well as damages to be decided by a jury at trial.