Author Names Tartikoff Firm, Clancy in Suit

Steve Sohmer, a screenwriter, producer and novelist, is claiming that television producer Brandon Tartikoff and novelist Thomas Clancy cut him out of more than $1 million in revenue from publishing rights deriving from the television miniseries he wrote called “Op Center.”

Sohmer, a former president of Columbia Pictures and executive vice president of NBC Entertainment, where he worked with Tartikoff, filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, charging that Clancy, and Tartikoff’s production company, Moving Target Productions, which is now owned by New World Television, breached a contract entitling him to publishing rights from the miniseries, which aired on NBC in February 1995 as “Tom Clancy’s Op Center.”

According to the complaint, Moving Target acquired the idea for “Op Center” and a partial outline from Clancy and his writing partner, Steve Pieczenik, who is also named in the suit. Moving Target hired Sohmer to write the miniseries and produced it for NBC.

Clancy could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for New World, which is also named in the suit and where Tartikoff heads up the entertainment group, said it had not seen the lawsuit and therefore could not comment.