The Supreme Court may have finally ended the protracted litigation between a
syndicator and a station group that didn't pay to rerun old TV shows.
The high court this week refused to hear the appeal of C. Elvin Feltner's
Krypton International Corp. of a decision that it had aired reruns of Columbia
Pictures Television Inc.'s T.J. Hooker, Silver Spoons, Who's
the Boss and Hart to Hart without paying for them.
Krypton, which owned stations in Florida and Alabama, went bankrupt and no
longer owns TV stations.
The case had been before the Supreme Court before, following a 1994 judge's
ruling that Feltner owed Columbia $9 million. Feltner won the right to have his
case heard before a jury, which proceeded to more than triple the judge's $9
million award.
The latest appeal asked the high court to consider whether a jury should have
decided whether he should be penalized for each of the more than 400 times the
shows aired, or whether he should have been fined once for each of the four
shows.
The court rejected the appeal, which leaves the higher award in place.
Attorneys for Feltner said they were considering their options, but they
acknowledged that the Supreme Court decision limits those
options.
