Terrence Howard has been fined more than $1,500 in a discovery dispute concerning his lawsuit against Creative Artists Agency LLC in which he alleges the talent agency fraudulently convinced him to take less money for his “Empire” role.
On Thursday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Cherol J. Nellon found that although Howard’s attorney missed a deadline for responding to CAA’s requests for admissions, it was not deliberate. A request for admission asks the other side in your case to admit that a fact is true or that a document is authentic.
“Here, the court is satisfied that plaintiff’s counsel inadvertently failed to serve timely responses because he discovered too late that the draft discovery responses were insufficient,” the judge wrote, adding that since then Howard’s lawyer did file answers that complied with the code.
However, the judge said a fine, or “sanction,” was still mandatory to compensate CAA attorneys for having to draft their motion. But Nellon found CAA’s request for $2,000 to be too much and said that she was reducing the amount to $1,560 because the motion was “straightforward and routine.”
In a previous filing, CAA lawyers wrote that Howard’s claims are barred by the statute of limitations in addition to being “utterly meritless.”
In the suit filed in December 2023, Howard says he did not immediately know he was a victim of alleged fraud.
“Despite this feeling of trust, it would be years later that Howard would discover that CAA … placed their own financial interests, as well as the interests of the production companies they also represented, ahead of his own,” the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit states.
Although Howard knew that CAA was packaging the project and receiving a fee, he was unaware of the conflicts of interest CAA was faced with by not only having their own financial interests incorporated into the project, but in also representing the actors and the production companies, the suit states.
While the producers want to keep the top line production budget as low as reasonably possible, actors want to be paid the maximum value for their work, the suit states.
Howard, 55, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
“Empire” had a debut pilot that reached nearly 10 million viewers, marking Fox’s highest rated debut in three years, the suit states.
“As a result, “Empire” was an instant success, not only exceeding the network’s viewership expectations, but also bringing in significant praise by critics throughout the entertainment industry,” the suit states.
Howard’s film roles include “Crash” and “Hustle & Flow.”