Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and, most of all, the law.

As you might expect, I spent much of the past week at the riveting trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. At one memorable juncture, the defendant took the witness stand for a dramatic evidentiary hearing outside of the jury’s presence. Prosecutors shot tough questions at S.B.F. while his attorneys repeatedly cried foul. The spectacle was wild and intense, but regular readers of this newsletter won’t be entirely surprised, as I anticipated a few weeks ago that things were about to get tumultuous. I’ll have more insights about the trial, which is scheduled to conclude with closing arguments soon, in a separate email to follow.

In today’s edition, I wanted to provide some updates on a few colorful legal dramas I’ve previously showcased, specifically ones involving Ron Burkle, John Paulson, Anderson Cooper, Robert De Niro, Eddy Cue, and the lawyers who took on racial discrimination at Elon Musk’s Tesla.

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Let’s begin…

• The other Weinstein legal drama: Did the Saudis, or perhaps the Chinese, use the Harvey Weinstein scandal to cheaply acquire a stake in Quentin Tarantino’s film catalog? That revelation might be coming to an $80 million trial in Los Angeles. The case centers on what billionaire Ron Burkle feels Lantern Capital, the Texas private equity firm, owes him for his alleged assistance in Lantern’s 2018 acquisition of Weinstein’s former assets. Back in May, my partner Matt Belloni and I examined this under-the-radar legal fight, which was intensifying over an investigation into the value of Burkle’s investment in Yellowstone.

  As the trial approaches, both sides have made motions asking the judge to exclude certain topics from the jury. Interestingly, Lantern is seeking an order that would prevent Burkle’s legal team from revealing the ethnicity and nationality of its foreign investors. In other words, Lantern is demonstrating some sensitivity around the origin of the $289 million it spent five years ago to acquire a library of some 200 films, including Silver Linings Playbook, Scream, and Tarantino’s early hits. That information remains redacted, and Lantern’s lawyers argue it has no bearing on whether Lantern breached contract by cutting Burkle out of its Weinstein acquisition.

  For their part, Burkle’s lawyers aim to keep Yellowstone from coming up at trial. (Lantern wants to argue that whatever damage Burkle incurred by being cut out of the Weinstein deal, he then mitigated through his investments in Yellowstone producer 101 Studios.) They also want to foreclose any talk that Burkle had a personal relationship with Harvey Weinstein. Indeed, one motion specifically pertains to how Burkle allegedly harassed and assaulted a woman on one of his personal jets—and then enlisted Weinstein’s help to cover it up. Details about the incident are scarce, but Burkle’s lawyers maintain the allegation is false, and nothing more than a prejudicial attempt to liken him to a notorious rapist. The trial begins on Dec. 4.

• The latest twist in the John Paulson divorce: It’s been nearly a year since I first covered the contentious divorce of John Paulson, the Wall Street pro who made a fortune shorting the housing market fifteen years ago. After my report about Jenica Paulson’s fraud lawsuit against her ex-husband, his legal team became hypersensitive to publicity about the case. So much so, in fact, that in January, New York judge Louis Nock agreed to close the courtroom during a hearing. The court closure then became its own issue, with an appeals court ruling in July that the trial judge shouldn’t have acquiesced to Paulson’s demand to exclude the public. The case now returns to Nock, who must decide whether allowing wealthy individuals to place their assets in irrevocable trusts undermines a spouse’s entitlement to a fair split in a divorce. (The former couple don’t have a prenup.) The next hearing is scheduled for December.
• Disney vs. TSG: Speaking of stuff happening behind closed doors, consider the ongoing lawsuit brought by TSG Entertainment against Disney. As a refresher, TSG—the Avatar 2 co-financier and profit participant—is contesting how Disney renegotiated its HBO output deal, which allegedly allows Disney+ to benefit from hit films for a deflated price. This dispute has recently gone semi-dark, as the matter has been referred to a retired judge, meaning it stands somewhere in the void between the open court system and private arbitration.

  It’s very rare to see this process occur, although not unprecedented. It happened a quarter century ago, when Jeffrey Katzenberg took on Disney over money he claimed he was owed after being ousted as chairman of the company’s movie division. Back then, Variety and other publications successfully fought for the right to attend the trial (which settled, but not before revealing a blood feud between Katzenberg and Disney’s then-C.E.O. Michael Eisner). Will anyone intervene in the Avatar 2 case to ensure its openness? Hmm. Maybe that will fall to me.

• An NFL bidding mystery: We’re approaching a February 2024 antitrust trial, focused on NFL Sunday Ticket, the package of out-of-market football games that many subscribers consider excessively expensive. Attorneys representing the class of suing bars and restaurants are investing considerable effort into exposing the intense negotiations that led to an agreement between Roger Goodell’s league and Google’s YouTube. These efforts involve a bid to force top Apple executive Eddy Cue into a deposition, where he’d likely face questions about why a deal to bring Sunday Ticket to Apple’s streaming platform fell apart.

  Apple is resisting, which is unsurprising given its proclivity to sidestep legal dramas. In fact, Apple recently tried to get Cue out of testifying during the government’s antitrust trial against Google over its alleged monopolization of web search. When Apple failed, Cue took the witness stand in an emptied courtroom, and The New York Times is now leading a media group seeking to unseal the transcript.

• Some good news for CNN…: One case that seems nowhere close to trial is Dr. Michael Black’s libel lawsuit against CNN, brought in 2015 after the network reported on the infant mortality rate at St. Mary’s Medical Center, where Black worked. The network, however, scored a tremendous victory on Oct. 18, when a Florida appeals court reversed a lower judge by ruling that Black hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated CNN’s actual malice—the all-important threshold in such cases. Consequently, Black can’t pursue punitive damages, and the viability of his entire defamation case now seems imperiled. (A judge previously tossed his claim against Anderson Cooper, too.) Black’s next move will probably be to seek further review at the Florida Supreme Court, which is packed with Ron DeSantis appointees. Alas, it’s still too early to predict how this long-running case finishes.
• The $133 million haircut: One of the most intriguing legal situations in recent years involves a Tesla elevator operator, who won nearly $137 million at a racial discrimination trial in 2021, only to have a judge deem that amount excessive. Instead, that judge proposed a mere $15 million penalty on Elon Musk’s company, an offer that Owen Diaz, the plaintiff, rejected in the hopes of securing a more substantial award at a second trial.

  Regrettably for Diaz, the second jury returned a verdict of only $3.75 million, which is particularly disheartening for Diaz’ legal team. His attorneys operated on a contingency basis, and incurred more than $200,000 in out-of-pocket costs. On October 25, these same attorneys, led by Larry Organ, petitioned the judge to award them $10.4 million in attorney fees for their work on this significant case. (Read the motion here.) Tesla will undoubtedly contest this request, and the fee fight will be mighty entertaining.

• Come for S.B.F., stay for Bob!: Today marks the start of the trial between Robert De Niro and his former assistant, Graham Chase Robinson. (I covered the intricacies of this De Niro legal saga in June.) While the Sam Bankman-Fried trial has attracted numerous reporters, retired law professors, and even Gen Z tourists (yes, I encountered a few), many are unaware that the renowned actor is participating in a trial on another floor within the same courthouse. Then again, I suppose Killers of the Flower Moon didn’t exactly dominate the box office, either.