Pooh Case Records to Be Opened

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered that court files chronicling a 10-year battle with Walt Disney Co. over the value of Winnie the Pooh merchandise royalties be unsealed.

Superior Court Judge Earnest M. Hiroshige said the court papers, which have been closed since shortly after the case was filed in 1991, should be open. “It serves the public interest,” Hiroshige said in granting the motion filed by The Times.

The court fight began a decade ago when Stephen Slesinger Inc., a family-owned business near Tampa, Fla., sued Disney for breach of contract and fraud, claiming the Burbank-based entertainment company cheated it out of royalties for Pooh-related merchandise.

Slesinger was a New York literary agent who purchased merchandising rights for the A.A. Milne characters in 1929. After Slesinger died, his widow sold the merchandising rights to Disney in 1961.

But the Slesingers contend that Disney owes the family up to $35 million for failing to report at least $3 billion of Winnie the Pooh-related revenue since 1983.

No trial date has been set in the royalties case.

In November, The Times filed a motion requesting that Hiroshige unseal the court file. The newspaper’s attorneys argued that the 1st Amendment and numerous U.S. Supreme Court and lower court rulings require that court proceedings and documents be public and “can only be closed in extreme circumstances.”

The blanket order sealing the entire Pooh file was not justified, argued Jens Koepke, an attorney for The Times.

Hiroshige agreed, writing in his three-page ruling that “Disney simply has not shown that such trade secrets” warrant that all the documents in the case be sealed.

Hiroshige, however, granted Disney attorney Daniel Petrocelli’s request for additional time to determine what documents should be kept secret before the file is open.

Disney must submit by Jan. 11 a list of the documents they believe would be “hugely damaging if they were unsealed,” the judge said.