Skaters Put Deal on Ice, Firm Says
Ice follies . . . A modest trend . . . Tupac estate update.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Hire pairs skaters Craig Shepherd and Natalia Mishkutionok, the hockey player and the 1992 Olympic pairs figure skating gold medalist, to perform “Nutcracker on Ice.” Hype the heck out of their real-life love story. Then sit back and count the money.
And so it was with great anticipation that On Ice Inc. booked arenas, planned promotions and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing for the tour, said the company’s attorney, David M. Bass. But, according to a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, the skating lovebirds, who nest in Colorado Springs, canceled at the last minute.
This unexpected development, of course, threw a triple lutz into the plans for the tour, which was to have run from last November to last January.
The reason given, according to the suit: Mishkutionok had suffered a “sudden and mysterious muscle strain.”
Which is why Barry Mendelson, president of On Ice Inc., was stunned to learned that the couple had appeared on national television, skating at the U.S. Open Professional Figure Skating Championship in late January, at the same time they were supposed to have been on the Nutcracker tour.
On Ice Inc. is alleging fraud and breach of contract in its suit against the couple and Marco Entertainment, a Palm Desert company that books Olympic skaters who turn pro.
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MORE ICE FOLLIES: The suit over Shepherd and Mishkutionok is just the latest in the legal ice ‘capades between Marco and On Ice. Last month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ralph W. Dau tossed out another case, this one filed by Marco’s lawyers.
Marco--as well as skaters Tai Babilonia, Randy Gardner, Rudy Galindo and half a dozen others--accused On Ice of breaching the skaters’ contracts for touring ice shows.
But the judge said he couldn’t make heads or tails of the complaint, which he noted was more than 40 pages long and contained 208 paragraphs. The suit, the judge ruled, was “overlong [and] oppressive in the extreme.”
He told lawyer Michael Eisner (no, not that Michael Eisner): “You have just written any detail of any thought anybody ever had.”
Attorney Eisner didn’t return our phone call.
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NAKED HOLLYWOOD: From ice ‘capades to sex ‘capades. The trend toward celebrity modesty continued last week with U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall granting a permanent injunction keeping rocker Perry Farrell’s sex romps off the Internet.
Farrell, lead singer of Porno for Pyros, sought the injunction after learning of plans to distribute copies of a tape purportedly showing him having sex and doing drugs with a girlfriend. It is not clear how the tape came into the possession of an outfit called Spy7.com.
The former Jane’s Addiction singer and founder of the Lollapalooza alternative music fest is much relieved, said his lawyer, Edwin F. McPherson.
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THE EX FILES: They didn’t even make it to their first wedding anniversary. Sultry pop singer Sheena Easton has filed divorce papers in Los Angeles Superior Court against her husband of 11 months, native Scot Timothy Delarm. The usual irreconcilable differences apparently apply, and she wants her legal name restored to Sheena Easton.
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TUPAC’S JUDGMENT DAY: It was with a sense of legal fair play that Superior Court Judge Arnold H. Gold tossed out a $16.6-million judgment entered in Arkansas against the estate of the late actor/rapper Tupac Shakur.
Gold found that the estate’s co-executors--Shakur’s mother, Afeni, and New York attorney Richard S. Fischbein--were never given a chance to defend themselves against a lawsuit targeting the estate before an Arkansas court entered a default judgment.
The Arkansas suit was filed on behalf of a 27-year-old woman who was shot and paralyzed by a stray bullet fired by gang members at a Shakur concert.
To enforce the judgment, the court in Arkansas appointed an attorney there as a special administrator to the Shakur estate, and immediately lodged the judgment against him. Then, a creditor’s suit was filed in California in an attempt to collect.
That’s not the way things are done in this state, Gold said, tossing out the creditor’s suit.
The judgment might still be good in Arkansas, said Fischbein, but it’s now worthless here, where most of the estate’s assets are located.
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QUOTABLE: “My client had his footage of Alec Baldwin smearing shaving cream over his windows. It was better than anything he could’ve hoped for. He was a happy camper.”
--Attorney Leonard Steiner as trial began in Van Nuys for photographer Alan Zanger, who is suing, and is being sued by, actor Alec Baldwin.
