Making a Case Out of Crime Scene Photos

MARCIA CLARK, DEFENDANT: Merritt Lori McKeon, author and battered women’s activist, has been a lawyer for only a month. Her bar card’s still in the mail. That did not stop McKeon, of Laguna Beach, from filing her first lawsuit--against O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark. In her lawsuit, McKeon alleges that Clark may have violated a court order by publishing Simpson crime scene photos in her book, “Without a Doubt.” The suit quotes at length from a transcript of a June 1995 hearing during which Clark successfully argued for a court order prohibiting media publication of photos depicting the corpses of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Thus, McKeon said, she was surprised and offended to see photos in Clark’s book showing Nicole’s bare back and her head in a pool of blood, as well as Goldman’s cut hand. Nor did she appreciate Clark’s negative comments about Lou Brown, the victim’s father, who is a friend. And so, after scouring the Simpson criminal case file, McKeon said she found nothing to indicate that Clark was ever granted permission to publish the pictures. “I’m looking at the cover of Marcia Clark’s book,” McKeon said. “Her little tochis is planted on a box. And what does that box say? Extra photos. Case files, People vs. Simpson.” The suit states that Clark, who was paid a reported $4.2 million for her trial memoir, had no right to use the photos or profit from them. McKeon says she hopes her case will lead to a legal decision protecting crime victims from being exploited by police, coroners and lawyers involved in high-profile cases. Clark’s lawyer had no comment.

SPELLING LESSONS: These are litigious times for producer Aaron Spelling on both the home and business fronts. As the trial gets underway tomorrow to settle who’s responsible for Aaron and Candy Spelling’s allegedly leaky, miscolored roof, it doesn’t look like the jurors will get a peek at casa Spelling. Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janav has said she is inclined to skip any field trips to the 56,000-square-foot mega-manse on one of the most exclusive streets around. Alas, the fabled doll museum, bowling alley and gift-wrapping rooms will be left to the jurors’ collective imagination as they decide whether the Spellings are entitled to the $5 million they seek in damages from their builder. The Spellings’ dream house project began in the 1980s, with the purchase--for $10.25 million--of the old Bing Crosby estate. The Spellings built their own huge, W-shaped monument, assessed at $37 million.

A separate suit against the company that built the Spellings’ pool has been assigned to the courtroom next door.

Meanwhile, life imitates “Melrose Place.” A judge last week refused to toss out an actress’ discrimination suit against Spelling’s production companies, which dumped her from the steamy soap when she became pregnant.

Superior Court Judge Daniel Curry ruled that it should be up to a jury to decide whether a pregnant Hunter Tylo could have pulled off the role of a man-stealing minx. The 34-year-old Tylo, a former model who appears on “The Bold and the Beautiful,” became pregnant in March 1996, a few weeks after inking a four-year deal to join the “MP” cast.

The pregnancy would have been impossible to hide, Spelling lawyers argued in court papers.

It’s not that “MP” producers don’t appreciate family values. The decision to dump Tylo would have been the same whether her weight gain was the result of “eating too much candy, a thyroid condition, getting too little exercise or any other reason,” court papers say.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS, A CHAIR IS JUST A CHAIR: Of all the auctions in all the towns in all the world, Robert G. Noe had to tune into this one. It was April 1975. KCET was selling movie memorabilia over the airwaves. Noe fell hard when he saw the brown leather chair from “Casablanca.” He paid $350 and displayed it proudly in his Ojai home for the next 22 years.

Only recently, the businessman claims, he learned that his so-called “Bogart chair” was bogus. A Santa Monica collectibles dealer informed Noe she couldn’t find his chair in a single scene of the 1942 film classic.

Now he is suing the station and Warner Brothers Studios for misrepresentation, saying his Tinseltown treasure didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

“The chair is a fake,” said Oxnard attorney Glen M. Reiser, who filed a lawsuit Friday on Noe’s behalf. “Round up the usual suspects. That’s all I have to say.”

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that KCET and the Warner Brothers prop department intentionally misrepresented the value of the chair when it was auctioned. Representatives at KCET and Warner Brothers said they were unfamiliar with the case and could not comment.

THE MEMBERS CAN THANK THE ACADEMY: A North Hollywood mailing service has to return an allegedly purloined list containing the names and addresses of more than 9,000 members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, a judge ruled Thursday. In a surprising move, Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne also ruled last week that the TV academy can search the computers of Premier Mailing Service and delete any duplicates of the list. In no way, the judge added, can the mailing service sell or distribute the names, addresses and phone numbers of academy members. The judge found that the academy had “gone to extraordinary extremes to protect” its membership list, noting in her decision that even most academy employees aren’t privy to it. A beaming academy lawyer, Calvin Davis, called the permanent injunction “a complete victory.”

LEGAL FACE/OFF: Could you walk away from a $16-million payday? John Travolta did and it got him sued. The next performance for the actor, whose film “Face/Off” opened last week, could be on the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom. His lawyer, Bert Fields, says he expects that Travolta will testify at a trial next month of his decision to back out of the Roman Polanski film “The Double.” Liteoffer Ltd. and Mandalay Entertainment say Travolta had a deal. But Fields said Travolta never signed on the dotted line before creative differences scuttled the project. “He really wanted to do this picture,” Fields said, “but had it been made the way the director wanted, it would have been an artistic and financial failure.”

Liteoffer and Mandalay claim that Travolta undermined Polanski’s authority by demanding rewrites to the screenplay outside of the director’s presence. They also contend that Travolta insisted on perks such as massage therapists, a personal cook and his own trailer and private plane at the Paris location.

Fields said such perks are “standard stuff” for major stars.

SUING YOUR LAWYER, TODAY ON LEEZA: TV talk show host Leeza Gibbons filed an $8-million lawsuit against her former lawyer, alleging that he inflated his fees while giving her bad legal advice that got her sued and virtually banned from the lucrative infomercial industry. In the suit, Gibbons alleged that her former lawyer Kenneth L. Browning improperly acted as an unlicensed talent agent. She is asking the court to bar Browning from taking payment for procuring work for artists in the entertainment field.

Gibbons, host of her own “Leeza” talk show, settled a lawsuit last year by Paramount Pictures after she appeared in two infomercials even though her Paramount contract didn’t allow it.

“It was impossible to perform one contract without violating the other,” said Gibbons’ attorney, Michael Novicoff. “As a result of settling the case with Paramount, she’s not doing any more infomercials.”

Attorney Joel Boxer said Browning did nothing wrong and that Gibbons is merely trying to avoid paying past-due legal bills.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson contributed to this column.