Magazine Executive Not Guilty of Contempt

A judge Wednesday said the business dealings of a North Hills magazine editor “bear the hallmarks of a contrived sham” designed to help him avoid payment of a $500,000 judgment, but declined to hold him in criminal contempt.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stephen Petersen found Ray Ferry, the editor and executive publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, not guilty of willfully disobeying a court order to refrain from selling back issues of the ghoul-filled glossy.

The judge also found Ferry not guilty of willfully refusing to return certain items to Ferry’s former business partner, Forrest Ackerman, who last year had won a trademark infringement and breach-of-contract lawsuit against him.

Last May after a civil trial, Ackerman’s attorneys successfully proved that Ferry, with whom Ackerman also once collaborated to stage science-fiction conventions, refused to share profits with him as promised.

Ackerman, who is now 84, also won control of the “Dr. Acula” trademark, a moniker he said he coined in 1939.

During the trial, Ackerman’s longtime friend, the science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, testified that he has known Ackerman as “Derrr-Acula, or Dr. Acula” for 60 years.

The jury awarded Ackerman $724,500 in damages, which Petersen later reduced to $475,499, plus $30,000 in attorney fees.

Ackerman said Wednesday he has not yet collected a penny of the judgment.

“This just goes on and on,” said Ackerman, the former editor of Famous Monsters, who had a falling-out with Ferry in the mid-1990s and then resigned from the magazine. I never dreamed everything could be so complicated, so many ways for the wrongdoer to avoid paying what the jury awarded me.”

Ferry has denied any wrongdoing, said he is broke, and has filed for bankruptcy, which Ackerman is contesting. Ferry said he is now unemployed and works at the magazine without pay.

According to court records, Ferry assigned his magazine’s trademark to Esketores Systems, a corporation formed by the law firm that represented him during his civil trial against Ackerman, which then licensed the trademark for $100 a month to another company called Gothix, whose president is Gene Reynolds--Ferry’s trusted friend, companion and “‘cosmic brother,” according to court documents and testimony.

In the current issue of Famous Monsters, which features Bela Lugosi on the cover, Reynolds is listed as the general manager, just below Ferry’s name on the masthead.

Thomas Brackey II, who represented Ferry during his civil trial, testified that lawyers took the magazine’s trademark as collateral for Ferry’s unpaid legal bills.

But Ackerman’s attorney, Irwin Wittlin, called the setup a “‘straw man” and “‘a systematic scheme to hide (Ferry’s] assets.”