Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Dueling Court Filings by 'Rebecca' Combatants Reveal Backstage Drama
NYTimes.com: The Broadway publicist who used to represent the troubled musical “Rebecca” has asked a State Supreme Court judge to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses him of torpedoing the show last fall, arguing that he simply warned a potential investor that its producers had fallen prey to a fraud scheme.
But those producers pushed back this week in a lengthy defense of their lawsuit against their onetime publicist and confidante, Marc Thibodeau, accusing him of subterfuge and destroying “Rebecca” by scaring off the potential investor with grimly worded e-mails sent through phony Gmail accounts. The latest arguments by both sides in the lawsuit – which charged Mr. Thibodeau with defamation and breach of contract and fiduciary duty – are now pending before Justice Jeffrey K. Oing.
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I find myself mildly surprised that you can file a lawsuit claiming that someone deliberately tanked a show. I feel like I shouldn't be surprised, but there you go. I'm honestly not sure how one would go about proving this in court, though. Because it sounds like they are dealing with motivations, it turns into a battle of he said-he said, which I am fairly certain is not admissible in court. I may be wrong though. Or thinking of a different sort of court.
The "Rebecca" Mystery is back! I was wondering what had become of this intrigue. I can easily see the producing group's frustration with their publicist. And there is, I'm sure, plenty of precedent for their suspecting the type of back-room back-stabbing politics that could easily have involved a Broadway player like Mr. Thibodeau. On the count of Fiduciary Responsibility, however, I'm not motive really plays into it. Contract and responsibility disputes, it seems to me, hinge on whether or not there was an existing responsibility and whether or not that responsibility was upheld. Why it was or was not upheld is beside the point, so motive is not a deciding factor. Defamation, as I understand it, is another story, where motive and intent are crucial to deciding guilt. If the producing group and their P.I. (I can totally picture the mustached and trench-coated sleuth lurking in the back alleys off 42nd St. as I write) can find evidence of collusion or intent to derail the project then that would go a long way towards proving defamation. Just the anonymous email thing already smells a little fishy, but they'll have to do better in court. Looking forward to the next chapter in this saga, in which Mr. Thiboedeau will undoubtedly be unmasked and revealed to be the old groundskeeper after all, and will be quoted as blaming "those meddling kids" for his botched schemes.
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