DC Comics $20,000,000+ Payout For Superman – REJECTED

The legal machinations between Laura Siegel, Marc Toberoff and DC Comics hit a whole new level in the past week.  Documents filed in the Court Of Appeals shows that DC Comics are standing firm with their claim that a deal had been struck on the 19^th of October 2001 and that the same deal was allegedly soured by the interference of Marc Toberoff.  This time they’re not just relying on the court to agree with them even though they're still throwing out the usual lines about work-for-hire, they’ve now stated that, “Under the deal, Larson would receive tens of millions of dollars in cash and future royalties, which DC has fully reserved and remains ready to pay. DC would receive peace with Larson and certainty in its Superman rights.  The deal went bad only when - and only because - Hollywood businessman Marc Toberoff entered the picture, seeking to reopen the dispute and obtain the Superman rights himself.”  This stance everyone is aware of now and DC have made sure of that by taking Toberoff to task in a separate case.

In recent times DC has merely hinted about the amounts of money that Laura Siegel stands to gain for settling the suit and signing with them.  The hints have always been in the wording of ‘tens of millions of dollars’, but finally DC have announced the amount that is sitting aside for her.  Buried in a footnote to a line about accounting and reservation of amounts due, DC have stated that, “…the record fact remains that a reserve was set; it totals more than $20 million, and the funds will be paid to Larson if this Court enforces the 2001 agreement. Larson gets all of this money, though Marks may have a claim to 5%; only Toberoff loses his improperly obtained 40% (or more) cut.”  Thus the actual amount is still yet to be revealed, but that equates to roughly $2,000,000 per year since the accounting period began in 2001.  That’s a lot of money for anyone to turn their back on and when you consider that the deal included such benefits as health insurance – a brilliant carrot to dangle in the USA – then it would give people pause and have them ask, what exactly was wrong with the deal in the first place.

There are those who claim to know what was wrong.  Those people state that the deal was ‘changed’ considerably, and Joanne Siegel even hinted at this.  However with the thousands of pages that has been filed in all of the cases, no amended deal has been supplied.  You would assume that if the deal that DC offered had been altered then surely it would have surfaced by now, but no.  As it stands the only people who know exactly why the deal was rejected appear to be Laura Siegel and Marc Toberoff, and they’re being very coy with the reasons, but more on that later this week when I open the Pandora’s Box on the correspondence between all parties.  Until then have a read of DC latest Reply Brief and ask yourself this – if you were as impoverished as Laura Siegel (and Marc Toberoff) claims she is, could you turn your back on that much money?  And, if the case is not about money, then what is it about?