Howard Stern Files Appeal in Lawsuit
It certainly did not take long for attorney’s from the Stern camp to get the paperwork together to file an appeal. The original lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice and was first reported here at SiriusBuzz. following the decision by Juge Barbara Kapnick, Howard Stern expressed dismay at the judges ruling and vowed an appeal.
Following the news, we here at SiriusBuzz reviewed the documentation and consulted various attorney’s for their opinion. Their opinion was that Stern indeed had grounds for an appeal, and that in fact the bonus for the year 2007, at a minimum, appeared to be owed to Stern given the legal language. SiriusBuzz offered that deeper look in a follow-up article published April 18th.
The news that The King of All Media was going to appeal should not be a shock to anyone. The fact that the appeal was filed so quickly may take some by surprise. In a short and simple Pre-Argument Statement, Sterns’ team contends that Judge Kapnick misinterpreted the contract language and therefore erred in issuing summary judgment.
While the higher court is not required to accept the appeal, it would appear that there is enough for this appeal to at least garner consideration. In reviewing the documents filed it does indeed appear that the judge may have mis-assigned certain bonuses to certain years and missed at least one bonus. in fairness to the judge, the original filing did seem to offer room for such confusion. The fact that bonuses were paid in the calendar year after the performance year probably did not help.
Clearly the Stern saga is not done.
[Legal filings: Appeal | Pre-Argument Statement]
Please be kind and credit the source.
I am not a lawyer, but if the case was dismissed on summary judgment, the facts of the case should not have ever been taken into consideration. I thought that summary judgments were issues only on the basis of the law, not the facts of the case. Therefore, I don’t see how the facts surrounding the payment of the bonus would be a basis for an appeal of a summary judgment.
Jon
Apellate courts deny more appeals than they over turn.
esp., cases “with prejudice”…
While this is true, it does appear that the judge did err, at a minimum, on the bonus for 2007 which would have typically been paid in 2008. If you read the contract and the sums paid, the judge does not dispute that stern gets a bonus for 2 million over the stated subscriber guidance.
IF it is an error, its irrelevant to the ruling. There is no dispute about the bonuses that have been paid.
Now if he could just manage to put on an entertaining show and up for work as well as he can file lawsuits? What an ingrate.
I agree, freespeech. Stern has obviously checked out, from a creative standpoint, and is in an all out money grab mode. It’s too bad.
The bottom line in this whole case is if you consider the EXISTING XM subscribers that were “added” to the total number of subscribers to SiriusXM to be “new” subscribers that count towards Stern’s bonus. He was smart enough to not let them try to identify “Stern generated subscribers” as that would have been almost impossible. His contract gives him credit for all new subscribers since he came on board. How much money he already has and gets is completely irrelevant here and all the comments to that effect only give him more fuel to complain about the decision. He should get whatever he is owed.
Stern was also smart enough to write in a bonus for himself in the case of a merger. Here is where the decision becomes easy for me. He DID consider a merger. Since he thought about that possibility, NOT making sure that the existing XM subscribers were counted (if he thought that is how it should be) was a huge oversight.
Back to the basic question. Do existing XM subscribers acquired in the merger count as new subscribers in Stern’s compensation?
You can form your own opinion. Mine is absolutely not.
Here is something to consider. If existing XM subscribers were “added” to the SirusXM Company, then weren’t existing Sirius subscribers also added to the SirusXM Company? If so, doesn’t Stern get credit for those also??????
I am a big fan of Howard’s and I do truly believe that he honestly believes he is owed this money. It’s just that he is wrong this time.
Appeals generally have to be based on errors of law, not facts. Generally the facts are determined by the lower courts. The best that Stern could hope for is the appeals court to ask the same judge to reconsider the same facts. Not going to happen. The appeal is baseless just like the original lawsuit. Stern isn’t getting good legal advice, only lawyers telling him what he wants to hear and taking his money.
watched Beth on Ellen….she called you “My Howard” and in girl words it meant go ahead hate him, judge him, but listen to me…I know I can just be me, because “My Howard” loves my heart and has no fear of my girl power! Thank you Howard, you added one more girl to have a voice…one day we will rule the world!
Howard, in history Woman have been burned alive (cause we may be witches…really). Men would not allow woman to vote (cause of a man’s strange need to feel powerful). Regardless…my point is that Beth had no fear on Ellen, She knew that her Howard loves her silly, get’s her crazy, and has her back!
Well done, go girls!!!
Jennifer, I suggest you stop painting your own desires onto other people, such as Beth. You strike me as a feminist. And feminists are just as bad chauvinists. They separate men and women. And like chauvinists do in regards to men, feminists try to claim that being female is somehow better. It is not. You have a victim mentality, and you need to get that checked out. It’s very unhealthy to blame others for your own issues. And blaming all men for the actions of the few men who hurt you personally, is extremely unhealthy.
Beth was simply on Ellen to promote Howard’s new image, and her new (and awful) TV show. It’s just a publicity move. It’s not real. Everything she touched on in the interview was rehearsed and thoroughly worked out beforehand. To think otherwise is incredibly naive.