Category Archives: Business Law

Information about legal issues affecting small businesses, including big business. The latest news, videos, and discussion topics on Legal Issues involving business and money.

Producers of Tupac Biopic Sued for $10 Million

Ron Galella/Getty Images
By Christina Lee • October 29, 2015

Translation: No, you won’t be seeing the film anytime soon.

Production company Emmett/Furla Oasis has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Morgan Creek Productions. Both companies are producing the anticipated Tupac biopic; however, Emmett/Furla claims that Morgan Creek cast its Tupac Shakur without their permission—a breach of their contract. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Morgan Creek agreed to let Emmett/Furla have sole approval of the film’s director and the lead actor.

This latest development (if you can call it that) has hardly been the film’s only setback. John Singleton, who worked with the rapper and Janet Jackson in 1993’s Poetic Justice, was set to direct the biopic but then exited production in April. He now wants to direct a Tupac film of his own. “The people involved [in the biopic] aren’t really respectful of the legacy of Tupac,” John said at the time on Instagram. Carl Franklin is now set to direct.

In 2009, Morgan Creek sued Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur over the music rights to the film. Afeni countersued before both parties eventually settled in 2011.

Tupac is more than deserving of a film about his life. Among other life events, he started rapping while enrolled in a performing arts school, only for his mother Afeni to miss the early years of his music career because she got addicted to crack cocaine. Politicians feared him as he faced death threats. He survived several shootings as he rapped about how he was going to die at a young age, all before he was fatally shot at 25.

Revisit the Poetic Justice trailer below.

Full Article – https://myspace.com/article/2015/10/29/emett-furla-oasis-sue-morgan-creek-productions-tupac-biopic

Small-business legal group urges Supreme Court to hear property case

By Lydia Wheeler – 10/19/15 11:23 AM EDT

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Legal Center is urging the Supreme Court to take a case out of California that questions whether a city can constitutionally force developers to sell certain housing units below market rates.

The case, California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose, Calif., centers on a city rule that requires developers to set aside 15 percent of all newly constructed residential units for the city to use as affordable housing stock or opt out by paying a fee.

NFIB Small Business Legal Center is asking the Supreme Court to hear the case and reverse the California Supreme Court decision upholding the housing rule.

“Here we have the city of San Jose trying to use its power to bully landowners,” Karen Harned, the group’s executive director said in a news release. “Clearly, the constitution protects private property and the right of landowners to exercise their right to use and sell their property at market rate. The court should stop San Jose and other cities with similar schemes.”

The legal arm of the nation’s leading small-business association said the court should settle the lower court split and follow the legal precedence it set in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission. In that case, the court held that the government couldn’t require a landowner to dedicate property as a condition of a permit approval.

Read Full Article – http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/257306-small-business-legal-group-urges-supreme-court-to-hear-property-case