Atlanta-based Music, Film & Television Producer enters $8.1 million default judgment against Byron Allen’s companies
 Allen’s companies include CF Entertainment, Inc., Entertainment Studios Home Entertainment, Inc. and their distributor Anchor Bay Entertainment, LLC
Â
Atlanta, GA (BlackNews.com)Â – Plaintiff, Mark Skeete, has filed an $8.1 million default judgment against defendants CF Entertainment, Inc., EntertainmentStudios Home Entertainment, Inc. and their distributor, Anchor Bay Entertainment LLC, (a Starz company), for failing to answer a lawsuit filed against them in a timely manner.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal Court in August 2010, also names Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC as a defendant. All defendants are represented by the law firms of Loeb & Loeb and Friedman, Dever & Merlin. The suit alleges three counts of copyright infringement, fraud, violations of the Federal RICO and Georgia RICO. The ongoing legal dispute originated from the distribution of Skeete’s 2006 documentary and soundtrack, “Crunk Kings DVD The Movie”.
This is the second round of legal proceedings regarding this dispute, as a result of his former attorneys (Cary Ichter, Patricia Roy and Ronald Scott Griffin) from the law firm of Adorno & Yoss, acting on their own volition and dismissing the first case. In Skeete’s attempt to reinstate the first case, Skeete retained, new attorney, Cheryl Brazil, a former engineer, with the Army Corps of Engineers, who was later joined by attorney John Woodham. After five judges recused themselves, the Court finally made the finding that the contract was indeed unsigned (“…stating that the defendants have not presented a signed contract to the court…”) found the defendants’ argument to be highly ‘unusual’, denied defendants’ motion for attorney’s fees and ruled that Skeete was, however, bound by the actions of Ichter, Roy & Griffin, his former attorneys.
“The signature page of the agreement doesn’t have a drop of ink on it, much less my signature. The defendants in the original action, had the nerve to infringe on my copyrights and then sue me for attorney’s fees, after my former attorneys (Ichter, Roy & Griffin) mysteriously dismissed my case. I guess they ran out of lies to tell the Court this time and that’s why their response was filed almost 20 days late – and only after I filed the default motions. This happened on three separate occasions. Although my former attorneys’ actions helped the defendants in the first case, my new attorneys, Woodham & Brazil were superb. I felt like I won because the Court finally saw through the original fraudulent argument,” stated Skeete.
“I feel like I just defeated the defendants again- this time without a lawyer. However there’s some strange happenings going on again… it’s been almost three months and the Clerk of the Court has yet to place the defendants in default. I’m going to assemble a legal ‘dream team’ to enforce the default and collect the judgment. I am asking for the maximum judgment allowed by law because the infringement was deliberate and intentional. The law is the law, a default is a default and I will go to the Supreme Court of the United States in my quest for justice. I hope that Byron Allen and Deborah Mitchell have learned that they aren’t as slick as they think they are; they can’t just go around hijacking the works of others for their own monetary gain,” added Skeete.
