Judge Refuses to Stop Production of CBS-TV’s Simpson Miniseries

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused to pull the plug Wednesday on a CBS miniseries that promises the inside story of O.J. Simpson’s “dream team” of criminal defense lawyers.

Lawyers for Simpson sought a preliminary injunction halting production of the series, which they argued would betray confidential conversations between the accused killer and his lawyers. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Judge David P. Yaffe turned down Simpson’s injunction request, citing two points: Simpson suffers no irreparable harm because he can demand monetary damages later in a civil lawsuit against erstwhile sidekick Robert Kardashian and journalist Lawrence Schiller. And, Yaffe found, the miniseries dramatizes many scenes already made public in Schiller’s 1996 book, “American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense.”

The time to object, the judge told Simpson’s lawyers, was when the book was published.

Simpson attorney Terry Gross alleges that Schiller approached Kardashian, who was a member of the Simpson defense team, ingratiated himself by helping raise money for the defense, and induced Kardashian to violate the attorney-client privilege to gain the inside story.

Kardashian, who at one time planned to cowrite the book with Schiller, is credited instead as a primary source.

Lawyers for Schiller and Kardashian said Simpson waived the attorney-client privilege by allowing his lawyers to talk to the author.

The dispute concerns whether Schiller and Kardashian had agreed to let Simpson and other dream team members review the book before it was published, said Schiller attorney Gary L. Bostwick.

Simpson said in a declaration that he did not sue over the book because he was distracted at the time by another civil suit filed by the Goldman and Brown families and didn’t have the money.

“He sat on his rights,” Bostwick said.

Halting production of the miniseries would amount to prior restraint and violate Schiller’s free speech rights, Bostwick added. It also would cost the writer and CBS nearly $12 million.

The judge ruled after reviewing a script by author Norman Mailer, an occasional Schiller collaborator. The script was filed under seal.

In court, a tidbit from the script was revealed when Gross read out loud this line, attributed to Simpson: “This is the first day I woke up feeling really mad at Nicole.” The attorney did not say when Simpson uttered the line.

Simpson, Kardashian and Schiller--the series’ executive producer and director--did not attend the hearing.

Allowing the series to air, Gross said, will have huge implications on criminal defendants’ constitutional right to legal counsel. He said in court that he sought the injunction “to avoid the tabloidization of the 6th Amendment.”

After the hearing, he called the judge’s decision “wrong,” and said he was considering an appeal.