The Hollywood Overseas Press Affiliation sued Penske Media Group on Tuesday, alleging that the corporate engaged in a scheme to fraudulently purchase the Golden Globe Awards and acquire management over the awards market.
The 113-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Courtroom in Los Angeles, alleges monopolization, illegal restraint of commerce, unfair commerce practices and fraudulent misrepresentation amongst different claims. Additionally named as defendants within the lawsuit are Jay Penske, CEO of Penske Media, in addition to the Golden Globe Basis and its CEO, Gregory Goeckner.
The litigation is rooted within the controversy that swirled across the HFPA in 2021, when the Los Angeles Instances printed an investigation into the group, declaring its lack of variety and situations of self-dealing. The firestorm over the story led to publicists asserting a boycott of the ceremony, inflicting NBC to drop the telecast the next yr.
In 2023, the Globes had been acquired by Dick Clark Productions, owned by PMC, and Todd Boehly’s Eldridge. On the time, a brand new non-profit, the Golden Globes Basis, was shaped, because the HFPA was dissolved. The lawsuit identifies the plaintiff HFPA as a 501(c)(6) non-profit, with stories final yr {that a} group of overseas journalists sought to reconstitute the affiliation.
The lawsuit claims that Boehly used the boycott as a “pretext” to “infiltrate the HFPA and purchase the Golden Globes,” as he grew to become the interim CEO of the press affiliation. The lawsuit claims that Boehly, and then-HFPA president Helen Hoehne and then-general counsel Goeckner, championed the transaction that may switch management to DCP and Eldridge. Hoehne, who’s now president of the Golden Globes, was not named as a defendant.
The lawsuit claims that the HFPA members had been “compelled to approve the transaction in a sham course of tainted by fraud, conflicts of curiosity, and myriad breaches of fiduciary obligation.” It claims that Goeckner incuded the HFPA’s treasurer to switch $4 million from the affiliation’s reserve to the Golden Globes Basis.
The swimsuit claims that Hoehne, Goeckner and Boehly hid Penske’s involvement, and that he assumed full management three months after the settlement was signed.
The litigation additionally claims that PMC has obtained monopolies in three markets, together with Hollywood commerce publications, secondary awards and for-your-consideration promoting. The lawsuit claims that Penske and Boehly have tried to exclude the HFPA and its members from these markets and “deprive the HFPA and its members of enterprise alternatives and their capacity to guard and promote the pursuits of overseas journalists, and scale back aggressive output in favor of the journalists who work for Penske’s belief.”
The lawsuit claims that, within the furor over the HFPA in 2021, PMC media retailers like Selection and The Hollywood Reporter “participated in a media marketing campaign that disparaged and criticized the HFPA and accused the group of, amongst different issues, missing variety.” Deadline, which can also be owned by PMC, is known as as a non-party within the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that the defendants “proceed to conspire in an try and drive the HFPA to dissolve earlier than their malfeasance may be totally investigated and uncovered. Certainly, simply days earlier than the submitting of this Grievance, Penske and Boehly, by way of their company enterprises, formally supplied to GGF members prolonged Golden Globes voting rights and ballroom seats on the Golden Globes, however expressly acknowledged that these advantages had been contingent on — amongst different issues — the HFPA dissolving and the GGF affirmatively aiding Penske and Boehly to make that occur.”
A spokesperson for the Golden Globes mentioned, “Right now’s lawsuit continues the absurdity and irrationality that the business has come to anticipate from the defunct group previously generally known as the HFPA. The Golden Globes transaction closed greater than three years in the past and obtained all required approvals — any assertion that it didn’t shut, or stays topic to reversal, is as soon as once more unequivocally false.
The spokesperson added, “This newest act of duplicity is a brand new low, even for the HFPA. The try by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Basis, an impartial nonprofit, merely to safe Golden Globes tickets is an unlucky distraction that inappropriately diverts sources from respectable charitable causes. We stay troubled that the HFPA, a company so broadly criticized for moral failures, non-inclusivity, racism, and misconduct involving expertise, continues to seek out attorneys prepared to push such illegitimate claims.”
The HFPA in 2010 sued Dick Clark Productions, its longtime producer, over the rights to the telecast. That led to a prolonged trial wherein a federal decide sided with DCP over its rights to the present, and an eventual settlement in 2014.
