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$14 Million Lawsuit Filed Over ‘Survivor’ Profits

Nov 28, 2012  •  Post A Comment

A complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks more than $14 million in profits from the CBS reality series “Survivor” and other shows, Deadline.com reports.

Former CBS and NBC Business Affairs VP Layne Leslie Britton accuses Mark Burnett’s former partner Conrad Riggs of failing to compensate him properly for advice and consulting Britton provided to Burnett and Riggs around the time of “Survivor’s” debut in 2000, the story reports.

“It was only during Riggs’ own $70 million litigation with Burnett, which was settled earlier this year, that Britton claims that he learned ‘what Riggs consistently told him for years amounted to little more than lies and deceit.’ Riggs’ Cloudbreak Entertainment signed a formal agreement with Britton in October 2000, as Britton says he helped the relatively green producers through some of the tricky and costly waters of the network TV business,” the piece reports.

“For this guidance, Riggs informed the mentoring Britton that he would pay him out of his deal to receive 10% of what Burnett made from ‘Survivor’ or other projects.”

The complaint states that the men agreed: “Britton would receive 35% of what Riggs received pursuant to his contract with Burnett for all future cycles of ‘Survivor’ and 40% of all other monies received from Burnett or his companies pursuant to Riggs’ contract with Burnett.”

Britton was paid, but not enough, according to the suit. Britton “now says that he has discovered Riggs’ company made over $35 million from the success of Burnett’s shows over the years,” the story reports. “That was a lot more, the suit claims, than he was informed or compensated for.”

The suit states: “As a direct and proximate result of Riggs’s breaches of fiduciary duties, Plaintiff has been damaged in an amount to be proved at trial, but which, in any case, will exceed $14,000,000,” according to the report.

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