After seven years of legal wrangling, Paramount Pictures and Art Buchwald have agreed to settle a compensation dispute from the film "Coming to America," with Buchwald and a co-plaintiff, Alain Bernheim, being paid more than $1 million.
The settlement, which has been accepted by a state appellate court in California, ends a battle that began in 1988, when Buchwald, the syndicated humor columnist, and Bernheim sued Paramount for breach of contract. They contended that the film, which starred Eddie Murphy, was based on a two-page treatment that Buchwald had sold to the studio in 1983.Buchwald and his producer-partner, Bernheim, who had been hired to develop the treatment, argued that their original contract with Paramount also entitled them to a share of the film's net profit - a form of contingent compensation based on a complex, but standard, studio accounting formula.
During a lengthy Superior Court trial in Los Angeles, Paramount denied the film was based on Buchwald's treatment. Moreover, the studio argued that even if it were, Buchwald and Bernheim were not entitled to any payments because the film had yet to generate a net profit, even though Paramount's share of the film's world-wide gross receipts was more than $140 million.
In January 1990, Judge Harvey Schneider of Superior Court ruled that the film had indeed been based on Buchwald's treatment. Eleven months later, the judge also ruled that many of the net-profit terms in the studio's contract with Buchwald and Bernheim were "unconscionable."