Sixth time a charm?

The new legal team hired by Stephen Slesinger Inc. in its long running fight with Walt Disney Co. over alleged unpaid "Winnie the Pooh" royalties is headed by a low-profile pair that will have their work cut out for them.

Rick McKnight and Elwood Lui, partners in the Los Angeles office of Jones Day, stepped in last month as the sixth legal team representing the Slesingers in the 12-year-old case after Bertram Fields resigned in June. A scheduled September trial date has been delayed, with no new date set as yet.

"This is a place we've been before, so we've got the experience," McKnight said. "We handle difficult, complex business litigation. And we handle all phases of the dispute, including trials. This case is only different because it's 'Winnie the Pooh.'"

Slesinger's 81-year-old widow, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, and his daughter, Patricia Slesinger, own the company that brought the case against Disney.

Stephen Slesinger, a literary agent, acquired merchandising rights to "Winnie the Pooh" from its creator, author A.A. Milne, and under his guidance the Pooh characters gained worldwide recognition.

The company claims it is owed merchandising royalties unpaid since the 1960s that, depending on a more complete accounting, could range from $200 million to $1 billion.

The more genteel McKnight, managing partner of Jones Day's L.A. office, and Lui, a former associate justice on the California Supreme Court and former deputy state attorney general, step into a legal battle that has turned anything but polite.

In 2001, L.A. Superior Court Judge Ernest Hiroshige ordered Disney to pay a $90,000 sanction for destroying dozens of boxes of documents related to the Pooh character. Earlier this year, Disney accused the Slesingers of lying under oath and stealing evidence from Disney's offices.

Daniel Petrocelli, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers LLP handling the Pooh case for Disney, did not return phone calls.

Media shy

Partners for a decade, this latest legal team doesn't fit the profile of entertainment litigators ready to take on one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world.

McKnight and Lui, who prefer to keep their names out of the papers, replace Fields, a partner at Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman Machtinger & Kinsella LLP who welcomed the media coverage. He resigned unexpectedly in June for what he called a conflict of interest, and did not return calls seeking further comment.

The Jones Day team says they plan to manage the mudslinging by sticking to the truth. "We don't try our cases in the media," McKnight said. "We try them before the judge and the jury."

McKnight and Lui don't specialize in entertainment cases, having worked on everything from intellectual property to state finance to oil field contracts.

"These are not names from the trial field I would know, or the attack dogs of the litigation process," said Browne Greene, a partner at Greene Broilett Panish & Wheeler LLP, who was in the running to replace Fields.

They also don't fit the stereotype of many high-profile litigators, who ply their trade in boutique firms. Instead, Lui and McKnight are partners at a Cleveland-based law firm with more than 2,000 lawyers in 27 offices worldwide.

That doesn't mean Disney is breathing a sigh of relief.

"We have the battle of the titans," said Thomas Nolan, a partner at Howrey Simon Arnold & White LLP, who has worked with the Jones Day duo and has been outside counsel to Disney in other matters. "Disney is one of the most formidable companies to litigate against. But when you combine Rick McKnight with Elwood Lui, you have a formidable team. Rick is a very skilled trial lawyer, and Elwood is a brilliant strategist."

Polished look, gaze

And they do have some big-money entertainment notches in their belts. They teamed up in 1993 to represent Eileen Roddenberry in her civil trial against the estate of her late ex-husband, Gene Roddenberry, creator of "Star Trek."

Eileen Roddenberry claimed she was owed a share of profits from the original television show, as well as "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and the "Star Trek" feature films.

Brought in during the middle of the trial, they won $4.5 million, plus $900,000 in punitive damages.

Nolan says that McKnight convinces a jury with persuasive and passionate words while impressing a judge with a command of the issues.

In 1995, he represented NBC, ABC and CBS in their battle to lift federal regulations preventing them from owning shows they aired. The successful repeal of the roles led to Disney's acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC in 1996.

Lui, splits his time between L.A. and San Francisco, where he heads the Jones Day office, He has a range of expertise often envied by other lawyers, said Eric George, a partner at Browne & Woods LLP who serves with Lui on the bipartisan judicial advisory selection committee for the Central District of California, which Lui chairs.

But what sets him most apart the most is his mastery of accounting issues. A certified public accountant who worked at the predecessor to Deloitte & Touche, Lui said that accounting expertise is pivotal in royalty cases.

The team is backed by a litigation department recognized by American Lawyer magazine last year as the best in the country. In L.A., Jones Day acquired several lawyers from the now-defunct intellectual property boutique of Lyon & Lyon LLP last year.

So what's their strategy? McKnight and Lui are keeping mum.

"This case is complex, but it has a simple theme," Lui said. "It's a contract that produced a formula for royalties. It's just a question of whether the Slesingers' royalties have been honored."

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