Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Lucasfilm appeals High Court refusal to strike out Tyburn unjust enrichment claim over CGI use of Peter Cushing’s likeness in Rogue One (England and Wales)

Published on: 26 July 2024

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

The maker of Star Wars is contesting a December 2023 decision that a full trial is required to examine Tyburn Film Productions’ allegation that Lucasfilm needed its consent to ‘resurrect’ Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in the 2016 film Rogue One. Cushing, a veteran of English cinema, died in 1994. Edmund Cullen KC of Maitland Chambers, acting for Lucasfilm, told Judge Tom Mitcheson at the High Court that the earlier judge erred when assessing its prior bid to fend off the case. He argued that Tyburn’s unjust enrichment claim should be struck out as ‘bizarre’ and ‘just weird’. He told the Court that the law does not allow Tyburn to sue for unjust enrichment merely because it was ‘tangentially involved’ in an alleged breach of a 1993 agreement between Cushing and Tyburn granting the production company rights to use his likeness. ‘That’s simply not the way the law works, and, as I’ve said, were it the way the law works, everything we know about the economic torts would be thrown out of the window’, Cullen said...

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