Court Opinion

ID: 6936158
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 00:34:10.523905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:07:28.599279
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD,
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I dissent from so much of the court’s opinion as allows Mr. Ventura a recovery for royalties before Mr. Bloom negotiated a contract for him. To state a cause of action for unjust enrichment in Minnesota, a plaintiff must show either on legal or equitable grounds, or based on principles of natural justice, that a defendant’s retention of a benefit would be unjust. Mehl v. Norton, 201 Minn. 203, 205-07, 275 N.W. 843, 844-45 (1937). In the court’s view, Mr. Ventura was deprived of a legal right to additional compensation because Titan infringed his right of publicity. I believe that the court has mistakenly allowed this recovery, however, because I do not think that a right of publicity exists under Minnesota law.
The court finds a right of publicity under Minnesota law in the absence of any evidence that Minnesota’s courts would welcome this cause of action — and, indeed, a Minnesota Supreme Court case indicates to me that they would not. Minnesota has not adopted the tort of appropriation of name or likeness or any of the other torts collectively known as invasion of privacy, Hendry v. Conner, 303 Minn. 317, 319, 226 N.W.2d 921, 922-23 (Minn.1975), and a right to one’s likeness is virtually indistinguishable from a right of publicity. See Carson v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc., 698 F.2d 831, 834 (6th Cir.1983). With respect, the two federal cases that the court relies on offer no significant support for its conclusion. Uhlaender v. Henricksen, 316 F.Supp. 1277, 1279-80 (D.Minn.1970), was decided before Hendry, and McFarland v. E & K Corp., 18 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1246, 1991 WL 13728 (D.Minn.1991), cites no Minnesota state cases whatever for the existence of a right of publicity. It is also not irrelevant that a majority of states do not recognize a cause of action based on a right of publicity, Donald S. Chi-sum and Michael A. Jacobs, Understanding Intellectual Property Law 6-67 (1992), and it appears that most states that have adopted one have done so by statute. See id. at nn. 2 & 3. Finally, it is highly significant that, in the year 1995, when everyone not only wants his or her fifteen minutes of fame but the concomitant television rights as well, no Minnesota state court has yet discovered a right of publicity in Minnesota law. The court has thus cited no “reliable data,” B.B. v. Continental Ins. Co., 8 F.3d 1288, 1291 (8th Cir.1993), to indicate that Minnesota would recognize such a right. Titan was *737therefore not enriched in violation of a legal right recognized in Minnesota.
Nor has Mr. Ventura shown that it would be inequitable or violate natural justice for Titan to reproduce and sell the videotapes that it produced and on which Mr. Ventura was already paid to appear as an announcer without paying him additional consideration. The doctrine of unjust enrichment, it is true, may provide recovery for performing extra services not specified in an original contract, Sagl v. Hirt, 236 Minn. 281, 287, 52 N.W.2d 721, 725 (1952), but Mr. Ventura does not argue that he performed any duties in addition to his commentary. One may also recover to prevent unjust enrichment if a benefit is conferred “unknowingly” or “unwillingly,” Galante v. Oz, Inc., 379 N.W.2d 723, 726 (Minn.App.1986), but Mr. Ventura’s own testimony shows that he did not confer the alleged benefit unknowingly or unwillingly. More important, it is hardly unjust, from an economic viewpoint, that Titan should receive the full benefit from selling copies of the videotapes that it created. Titan, as entrepreneur, staged the wrestling matches, hired the various wrestlers, hired the announcers, and, above all, took the risks that the venture would fail to turn a profit. Now that Titan has been successful, Mr. Ventura wants additional compensation for having performed no additional work. If there is any unjust enrichment in this case, it is in allowing Mr. Ventura a recovery under these circumstances.
Plaintiff cites Frankson v. Design Space Int'l, 394 N.W.2d 140, 145 (Minn.1986), and Holman v. CPT Corp., 457 N.W.2d 740, 745 (Minn.App.1990), for the proposition that when there is a lack of full agreement concerning compensation an employee may still recover in quantum meruit. That is no doubt so. But those cases are inapposite because each involved performances that had con-eededly not been compensated. The issue in each was whether sales employees would be allowed to recover commissions. In Frank-son, the court held that the parties never reached an agreement about commissions and that therefore the plaintiff should be allowed a quantum meruit recovery. In Holman, plaintiff was terminated before she realized a commission on a sale that was virtually complete but still pending when she was fired, and the contract was silent with respect to whether a commission was due under the circumstances. Mr. Ventura, by contrast, performed and was compensated for his performances. He made an agreement to be paid a weekly sum rather than royalties for announcing wrestling events, and while he now regrets this less favorable arrangement, his regrets are not actionable under Minnesota law because one cannot recover for an unfavorable bargain. See Galante, 379 N.W.2d at 726.
Nelson v. Radio Corp. of Am., 148 F.Supp. 1 (S.D.Fla.1957) is an instructive case. Nelson, a vocalist, was hired to perform with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Miller paid him weekly according to union scale. Nelson sang six selections for a recording session and two more for a broadcast that also was recorded. Miller assigned all his rights in the records to the defendant, and in due course, defendant made copies of the recordings for sale. Nelson sued for an accounting for the sale of the recordings on which he sang, a 5 percent royalty on the records, as well as injunctive relief and damages. The evidence established that Nelson had no agreement with Miller entitling him to receive any royalties on the sale of photograph records. The court ruled that “any right in and to phonograph records or other recordings in connection with the production of which plaintiff worked were the property of the plaintiffs employer Miller....” 148 F.Supp. at 3. The court therefore rejected Nelson’s claim for royalties.
The reasoning of Nelson is highly persuasive and our case is strikingly similar to it. Mr. Ventura agreed to receive weekly pay to perform wrestling commentary. He does not dispute, as far as I can discern, that the videotapes belong to Titan. Mr. Ventura, like Nelson, is suing for a royalty on the sales of the recordings on which he performed. And like Nelson, Mr. Ventura deserves no recovery because he and Titan both performed under their contract and the recordings of Mr. Ventura’s performances now belong to Titan and it may profit from them as it sees fit.
*738Finally, even if Minnesota recognized a cause of action for the breach of a right of publicity, and even if this case could be properly characterized, as the court seems to believe, as a dispute over the scope of a license of intellectual property rights (that is, publicity rights), I still doubt that Mr. Ventu-ra should recover. Mr. Ventura himself testified that he was employed to “broadcast wrestling.” The agreement was therefore clearly susceptible to the construction that it authorized the sale of videotapes to end users. According to a leading copyright treatise, the preferred rule for copyright contracts when the intent of the parties is unclear is that the licensee may properly pursue any uses that may reasonably be said to fall within the medium as described in the license. 3 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 10.10[B] at 10-93 (1993). It follows “that a grant of the right to exhibit a motion picture by ‘television’ in its unambiguous core meaning refers to over-the-air television broadcasts, but in its ambiguous penumbra includes any device by which the motion picture may be seen on television screens, including cable television and videocassette uses.” Id. at 10-94. The ambiguity ought to favor the licensee because “it is surely more arbitrary and unjust to put the onus on the licensee by holding that he should have obtained a further clarification of a meaning that was already present than it is to hold that the licensor should have negated a meaning that the licensee might then or thereafter rely upon.” Id. I believe that this principle is recommended by reason and is applicable here because a right of publicity does not differ in any material way from a copyright. See Baltimore Orioles, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Players Ass’n, 805 F.2d 663, 679 (7th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 941, 107 S.Ct. 1593, 94 L.Ed.2d 782 (1987). Mr. Ventura testified that he was hired to perform commentary for television broadcasts. “Television broadcasts” under these circumstances must reasonably include dissemination of the videotapes containing the commentary that Mr. Ventura performed as part of his employment. Indeed, this seems to me utterly implicit in the original contractual arrangement.
For the foregoing reasons, I believe that Mr. Ventura’s claim for additional compensation for his announcing duties in the period before Mr. Bloom negotiated a contract for him fails as a matter of law. I would therefore reverse that part of the judgment allowing Mr. Ventura’s recovery for his role as a commentator before he entered into the written contract.