Disney wins $1.6M in attorney fees for defending 'Moana' trade secrets claims

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Walt Disney Co. was awarded $1.6 million in attorney fees for having to fight bad-faith claims that it stole the story of “Moana” from a one-time animator.

That animator, the judge found, lied about when he first saw the movie to avoid the statute of limitations and had even forged a confidentially agreement to back up his claims.

In an order posted Friday, Senior U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall agreed with Disney that Buck Woodall had in bad faith brought federal and California trade-secret misappropriation claims.

“Plaintiff falsely alleged he had not seen ‘Moana’ until June or July 2017 despite knowing he had seen ‘Moana’ in theaters in 2016 and on DVD at the latest in March 2017,” the Jimmy Carter appointee wrote. He “continued to litigate his trade secrets claims based on this falsity for over four years, until the court ultimately granted summary judgment in favor of defendants.”

Woodall’s bad faith was evidenced by a fake purported confidentially agreement, the judge said. Woodall claimed the agreement was signed by Jenny Marchick, the stepsister of his brother’s wife, in 2003, when Woodall said he showed her a presentation package and draft script for a film he called “Bucky the Surfer Boy."

At the time, Marchick worked at Mandeville Films, a movie production company located on the Disney studio lot in Burbank, California. Woodall argued that Marchick had shared his proprietary trade secrets with Disney Animation, which then released “Moana” 13 years later.

But when the case went to trial last year, Woodall admitted that before filing his lawsuit in 2020, he had put Marchick’s name on the confidentially agreement, which had actually been signed by a Hawaii model who had worked for him.

Woodall then backdated it to Oct. 22, 2003, and attached a copy of the forged document to his complaint. The misrepresentations showed that “plaintiff’s trade secrets claims were objectively specious and brought/maintained with subjective bad faith,” the judge said.

At summary judgment, Marshall also threw out almost all of Woodall’s copyright infringement claims, finding they were time barred. However, she declined to award Disney another $3.9 million in attorney fees for having to fight these claims.

Instead — noting that Woodall appeared pretty much penniless — the judge awarded Disney just $54,000 in costs for the copyright defense. The court costs were “sufficient to deter plaintiff and others from bringing additional patently meritless or unreasonable copyright claims,” she said.

A jury in downtown Los Angeles deliberated for just three hours before finding that Woodall had failed to prove Disney Animation had access to his “Bucky” materials.

Since the jury ruled against Woodall on his access claim, there was no need for them to decide whether “Moana” was substantially similar to his “Bucky the Surfer Boy” treatment or screenplay.

In a separate order, Marshall sanctioned Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage $476,000 for needlessly drawing out the proceedings by failing to timely investigate the authenticity of the confidentiality agreement and for continuing to litigate claims he knew were barred by the statute of limitations. She noted that in his deposition by Disney’s lawyers, Woodall had said he first saw “Moana” more than three years before he sued.

To avoid double recovery, Disney agreed that Woodall will only be on the hook for the attorney fees that exceed the amount in sanctions they recover from his lawyer.

“We are disappointed by the judge’s orders and vehemently disagree with her findings and the rulings as a whole,” Lage said in an email. “We believe that these orders, much like the court’s rulings during the trial, are ripe for appellate review.”

Disney’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

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