The ‘Coming to America’ Suit, Part 2 : Movies: Deportation could bring an end to African’s litigation over what he calls his life story.

Humorist Art Buchwald’s legal war with Paramount Pictures over the Eddie Murphy film “Coming to America” may have garnered the headlines, but another lawsuit over the movie is attracting its share of intrigue and controversy.

On the morning of Feb. 13, police kicked in the door to Room 308 at the Beverly Hills St. Moritz Hotel Apartments and immigration agents apprehended Prince Johnny Osseni-Bello on a visa violation charge. He was deported Feb. 22 to the West African nation of Burkina Faso.

Osseni-Bello claims to be a real-life Nigerian prince whose own life paralleled the character played by Murphy in the hit movie. He further claims to have had numerous contacts with Murphy at social gatherings and that his ideas were developed with a writer named Shelby M. Gregory.

“What we are alleging is that Osseni-Bello had a specific script and that Prince Johnny’s life story is so similar to the script ‘Coming to America’ that all the communications engaged in between him and Eddie Murphy were clearly utilized in the movie,” said attorney Michael Brush, who is representing Osseni-Bello in a $100-million lawsuit.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, saying there would be no more delays in the case, scheduled trial to begin March 30 and told Paramount that Murphy would have to attend. But studio executives told the court that Murphy is currently filming the movie “Boomerang” in New York and his attendance at the trial would create a financial hardship on Paramount.

Murphy’s absence from the set “even for a short time, would threaten the quality of the motion picture and the reputations of those involved in its production,” said John Goldwyn, Paramount’s president of motion picture production, in a declaration submitted in the case.

After the judge’s ruling, Brush said a private investigator appeared outside Osseni-Bello’s hotel. Hotel owner Louisa Moritz said the investigator parked outside for five days and nights, questioning tenants on whether they knew Osseni-Bello and what room he lived in.

Brush said his client’s apprehension by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was “no accident.”

He contends that lawyers for Paramount and Eddie Murphy Productions attempted to obtain INS records on his client, thus alerting immigration agents to Osseni-Bello’s whereabouts. Osseni-Bello had been staying in the United States on an expired visa originally issued in 1979 and had been under an order of deportation since 1986.

“If we can’t get him back, it effectively eliminates the case because it is heavily dependent on the testimony of the plaintiff,” Brush said.

Paramount Pictures and Eddie Murphy Productions declined to comment.

INS officials said they discovered Osseni-Bello’s address when they received a Freedom of Information Act request for immigration files on a man they knew as Lassine Oussine, the name Osseni-Bello used when he entered the country.

The request “tripped a wire, that’s all,” said Ken Elwood, assistant district director for deportation, “and the results are, from the information I got, I could act and I acted.”

Elwood said he was legally prohibited from revealing the identity of the person who filed the FOIA request. He noted that it was unlikely Paramount attorneys knew there was an outstanding deportation warrant.

Meanwhile, Osseni-Bello’s friends said they hope arrangements can be made for him to re-enter the country to attend his trial.

“My grandfather is the king of Kasai, a region that produces diamonds in Zaire,” said Guy Mbuyi-Mukuna, who said he himself is a prince and he has known Osseni-Bello since they lived as playboys in Paris in the late ‘70s. “We will issue a diplomatic passport for Johnny for Zaire.”

“What the movie was about was his life,” said Mbuyi-Mukuna. “We had the same problem. Our families sent us over (to the United States). Johnny wanted to get married and when he came to California he became a friend of Arsenio Hall and Eddie Murphy.”

The INS’ Elwood said he had no information that Oussine is connected to African royalty. “It’s not a question we asked,” he said.