Source of Support on Tap

Where everybody knows your name . . . McDougal passes go . . . Pryor restraint.

Talk about courting the Joe Sixpack vote: Valley guy Steve Cooley, who is running for district attorney, likes to cast himself as the candidate for the common folk.

Among his $1,000 contributors, according to recent campaign finance reports: Mr. Bud Wiser of Studio City.

CHANNEL SURFING: Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court did not agree with his colleagues when they recently kept alive a federal lawsuit by “Cheers” actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger against Host International over look-alike robots at airport bars.

But Kozinski wrote the most entertaining opinion.

“Robots again,” the judge sighed, launching a discussion of what he views as the collision course between federal copyright laws and the state’s laws concerning celebrity publicity rights. Arcane stuff, but the Ronald Reagan appointee knows his pop culture.

And one can’t quibble with the judge’s research on the beer-swilling Norm and Cliff characters played by Wendt and Ratzenberger.

The actors’ case was dismissed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles when a judge found that the robots did not closely resemble Cliff and Norm. The 9th Circuit overturned the ruling, and recently denied Host’s request for a rehearing.

Kozinski observed in his dissenting opinion that the robots were no substitute for the real thing.

“In half-hearted attempt to avoid litigation, Host changed the robots’ names to Hank and Bob,” Kozinski noted in a footnote. Other footnotes recalled what made Cliff and Norm special to millions of television viewers--their snappy repartee:

* “Norm: It’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear.

* Cliff: It’s a little-known fact that the tan became popular in what is known as the Bronze Age.”

Ya gotta love a judge with a sense of humor, a flair for writing, and a steady remote control.

SETTLE, PEOPLE: A prominent Los Angeles law firm has agreed to pay $3.4 million to a former client who claimed the firm and his lawyer tricked him into financing a movie.

Alan James, 70, chairman of Oregon Trail Films, is credited as the executive producer of the unreleased film “Morgan’s Ferry,” starring Billy Zane and Kelly McGillis. He claimed in a lawsuit that his lawyers at Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman favored another client, producer Dan Levin, in setting up the deal, tricking James into financing the film.

The case was settled in mid-trial, after the testimony of James’ former attorney, Greg Bernstein, a partner in the defendants’ firm. Bernstein testified in depositions that he never represented James. But confronted on the witness stand with documentary evidence to the contrary, Bernstein stated that he “forgot,” according to James’ lawyer, Henry Gradstein.

Under terms of the settlement, Bernstein and the firm continue to deny any liability. In a prepared statement, the firm said that the settlement was “in the best interests of all parties.”

McMEHTA, DECADE II: A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has given Whitewater martyr Susan McDougal the green light to proceed with a slander and malicious-prosecution suit against her former employers, wealthy symphony conductor Zubin Mehta and his actress wife, Nancy.

The Mehtas had asked the judge to dismiss the suit, asserting that the criminal courts had found probable cause to try McDougal on charges that she embezzled money from the couple during the time she worked as an assistant to Nancy Mehta--from April 1989 to July 1992. Charges were filed in October 1993, and a jury in Santa Monica acquitted McDougal in November 1998.

In a written ruling, Superior Court Judge Alan G. Buckner said that a judicial finding of probable cause in the criminal case does not protect the defendants from McDougal’s civil claim that the Mehtas supplied authorities with false information. That is a disputed fact to be decided at trial, the judge ruled.

CHECKING FOR PRYORS: More legal complications for comedian Richard Pryor, who has filed for a restraining order against his adult son, Richard Jr., who in turn has filed legal papers of his own seeking to place Pryor’s estate under conservatorship.

Amid all the family wrangling, a Delaware company called Loud Records has surfaced with a question for a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to settle: Who owns the rights to master recordings of some of Pryor’s performances?

Loud claims it paid $200,000 to buy the rights under a Nov. 24, 1998, agreement with a company called Found Money Inc. Pryor claims he owns the masters.

Loud is asking a judge to sort out who owns what, and to issue an injunction in the meantime to preserve the status quo.

REBUTTALS: In granting a demurrer, Superior Court Judge David Minning did not comment on the merits of a fraud lawsuit by Elroy Schwartz and Austin Kalish, two writers of the pilot episode of “Gilligan’s Island.” The judge simply asked the plaintiffs to amend their suit, adding details about when the alleged fraud was discovered. Schwartz and Kalish are suing producer Sherwood Schwartz, Elroy’s older brother.

Times staff writer Mitchell Landsberg contributed to this column.