Simon and Schuster, Tommy Hilfiger, and Fendi were all hit withlawsuits last week in New York state court over unpaid internships.

Publishing house Simon and Schuster and designer Fendi are accused of violating labor laws from at least January 2009 and clothing company Tommy Hilfiger is accused of the same from at least February 2009 for misclassifying their interns as exempt from earning a minimum wage.

The complaints allege that the companies would have had to hire paid employees or required existing staff to work longer hours in lieu of hiring unpaid interns. The attorneys for the unpaid interns—also representing unpaid interns from CBS Corp., Rolling Stone, Lacoste, and The House of Z in a lawsuit filed in January—are asking for backpay and attorney’s fees.

The company of note here for the book publishing industry is, of course, Simon and Schuster, being the first publishing house to be subject to an unpaid internship lawsuit.

Law 360 reports that Simon and Schuster intern “Diana Bruk claims she provided unpaid work to the company from September 2009 through May 2010, making photocopies, printing press releases, stapling and performing other administrative duties for about 20 hours per week.”

As a former legal intern at three book publishers and a literary agency, it pains me to say anything negative about the industry that has helped me acknowledge my career goal, but this is a long time coming.

Undoubtedly, many interns are given substantive tasks, such as editing manuscripts, assisting in creating publicity and marketing strategies, and designing cover art. However, there are also some interns, as Bruk alleges was the case with her experience, who are busy the majority of the time making copies and completing administrative duties.

Factor in not receiving a paycheck, and what happens?  Interns may become confused, dismayed, or worst of all start to rethink career paths. I would hate to see many talented future publishing industry employees change career paths before they even begin. Some interns, like Bruk, have no incentive to go to work because not only do they feel that they’re reduced to secretaries and aren’t learning anything, but they’re not getting paid.  Who would blame them?

The reason for paying interns is simple:  interns will feel more valued and can produce a better work product. Even if an intern is assigned to scan documents all week long, he or she will feel like he or she has contributed to the company when a paycheck is deposited into his or her account.  Without pay, some interns feel like they have no value.

Unpaid interns fighting for a chance, via the legal system, to feel valued seems to be becoming a trend. Given that last October and November, Conde Nast and NBCUniversal settled unpaid internship lawsuits for $5.85 million and $6.4 million respectively, I suspect that we will continue to hear about more settlements for unpaid interns in years to come. Perhaps until a standard is created regarding intern compensation, media companies will continue to face the challenge of providing interns with tasks to enhance their professional development or offering them monetary compensation for completing tasks that are more administrative in nature and don’t directly bolster their understanding of the field.

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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My publishing career is unique because it has solely been through an intern’s eyes. I attended the 2010 NYU Summer Publishing Institute–where, I might add, I met my fiancée, who is currently a book editor. Like most English majors, I wanted to be an editor; however, by the end of the six-week program, my tune changed 180 degrees, and I knew I wanted to be a literary agent and a book publishing attorney. Two years later, I enrolled in law school.

Excluding one summer internship at talent agency William Morris Endeavor, the bulk of my legal internships have been with book publishers like Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and Hachette Book Group. You can say that I’ve found my way across the publishing landscape.

Regardless of where I’ve interned, however, I’m continually amazed at the people I’ve come across and the amount of effort it takes to publish books, which outsiders—consumers, critics, and dare I say, even authors—may not realize.

It’s no secret that the majority of employees in book publishing are grossly underpaid (interns included, if they are paid at all). For the majority of departments, employees start earning larger salaries once they reach senior positions, which can take more than a decade at times. However, the lack of pay produces camaraderie among book publishing industry members, especially younger employees who trade in their lack of a paycheck for the opportunity to assist in creating great art and surrounding themselves with books all day.

From top to bottom, book publishers are made up of mostly English majors who are editors, or who had dreams of becoming editors, but gravitated toward marketing, publicity, production, finance, art, contracts, subsidiary rights, or if you’re like me, the legal department. For this reason, publishing companies are unique in that each department contains members who are just as passionate, or even more passionate, than the next department about books.

This passion creates a work ethic within employees that the public may associate with big law firm attorneys, doctors, or investment bankers. Bringing work home and working on weekends can be the norm for some, especially when first beginning a book publishing career. Editorial assistants, in particular, are known to work extremely long hours, and their lives, which used to contain a full social calendar, are suddenly taken over by their authors’ books. They live and breathe through their authors’ successes or lack thereof. Life isn’t much better for mid-level and senior employees who bear the brunt of the responsibility for producing great books, turning a profit, and essentially keeping the book publishing industry afloat.

No matter how little they’re paid or how hard they work, what amazes me the most about the publishing industry is how genuine and kind everyone is.  Somehow they manage to wake up, wait in rush hour traffic—sometimes traversing across states lines—and walk into the office, smiling brightly or laughing, knowing deep down that they get to develop their own piece of culture.

This is why I’m glad Amazon and Hachette agreed to e-book and print price terms yesterday.  Forget the economic reasons. Forget who was right or who was wrong. The book publishing industry produces wonderful, kind people who help create art that can change you. Let’s not forget about that, and more importantly, let’s not forget about them.

Sometimes, I feel they were lost in the shuffle during the dispute. The media didn’t pay attention to them. Why would they? They didn’t create newsworthy events. Nevertheless, for six months they all sat in their cubicles and wondered aloud or to themselves what would happen if Amazon won. Would the book publishing industry meet the music industry’s fate? Would they be out of a job? Would they have to find a new career?

Fortunately, they’re not going anywhere.

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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This summer has been filled with celebrity defamation lawsuits, particularly against video game makers.  Early last month, Lindsay Lohan filed suit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto 5, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. and its subsidiary Rockstar Games, claiming that they used Lohan’s likeness without her permission.  Two weeks later, Panama dictator Manuel Noriega filed a legal action against Activision, the maker of Call of Duty: Black Opps II, also claiming that it used Noriega’s image without his permission.

Courtesy of [Chris Alcoran via Flickr]

The book publishing world also felt the sting of defamation lawsuits this summer brought by Hollywood starlet Scarlett Johansson and former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

In May 2013, Scarlett Johansson filed a libel lawsuit against French novelist Gregoire Delacourt for using Johansson’s name and image without her permission and for making false statements about her personal life in his best-selling French novel, The First Thing We Look At. The novel contains a scene in which the female protagonist, a French model who looks identical to Johansson, seeks the help of the lead male protagonist, a mechanic who mistakes the French model for Johansson. The character then has two affairs as Johansson, but her name is later revealed to be Jeanine Foucaprez. Johansson’s lawyer claimed that the two affairs that Jeanine had were untrue, and that the novel depicts Johansson as a sex object. Delacourte argued, however, that Jeanine was meant as a “tribute” to Johansson.

Courtesy of [pop torrent via Flickr]

Last month, a French court ruled in favor of Johansson and ordered Delacourt to pay damages in the amount of 2,500 euros (approximately $3,400) for his demeaning portrayal of Johansson.  Although Delacourte had to pay damages to Johansson, it seems that Delacourte’s publisher, J-C Lattes, won at the end of the day because the court denied Johansson’s attempt at an injunction to stop translations and film adaptations of the novel.  According to the Guardian, Emmanuelle Allibert of J-C Lattes said, “The book has already been translated into German and Italian and there has been interest in translating it into English, but publishers were waiting for the outcome of the case. Now we are open to offers.”

Across the pond in the United States, another defamation case unfolded this summer in federal district court in Minnesota, which book publishers took note of nationwide. Former Navy SEAL, pro wrestler, and Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura, sued the estate of Chris Kyle for libel in Kyle’s book American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History¸ published by HarperCollins. Kyle’s book contains a chapter entitled, “Punching Out Scuff Face,” which detailed a California bar fight that Kyle had with a celebrity in 2006. Ventura was not mentioned in the book, but Kyle said in interviews after HarperCollins published his book that Ventura was “Scruff Face.”  Ventura acknowledged that he was in the bar with Kyle but did not say that the Navy SEALS “deserved to lose a few,” nor did Kyle punch him in the face as Kyle alleged in his book. The district court in Minnesota favored Ventura and awarded him $1.8 million consisting of $500,000 for damages and $1.3 million for unjust enrichment.

Courtesy of Pesky Librarians via Flickr

Ventura’s award may be surprising due to the higher “actual malice” standard that public figures face in prevailing in libel actions throughout the United States. In libel lawsuits, public figures are placed in two categories: public figures and limited-purpose public figures. Public figures are people who are of great public interest (e.g., President Obama, Michael Jordan, Julia Roberts, etc.). Limited-purpose public figures are people who thrust themselves into a public issue or controversy to try to influence the resolution of that issue (e.g., guests brought on national news networks like MSNBC and Fox News to argue about ways to resolve various issues). In this case, being an ex-governor of Minnesota categorized Ventura as the former. Since Ventura was deemed a public figure, he had to prove that Kyle wrote false statements of fact about him that were made with “actual malice” (i.e.,  Kyle knew the statements he wrote were false, and Kyle deliberately or recklessly disregarded the false statements and published them anyway). Ultimately, the court believed that Ventura overcame the difficult “actual malice” burden of proof and awarded him damages.

The case isn’t quite over, however, as  on August 19, 2014, Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, filed a lawsuit in Dallas County Court against her attorney, Christopher Kirkpatrick, for malpractice. She claims that Kirkpatrick was negligent in his legal services and did not explain or disclose to the Kyles the various conflicts of interest that he had.

Ventura’s verdict is disconcerting to U.S. book publishers not only because of Ventura’s million dollar verdict, but because the lawsuit against Kyle’s estate could possibly have been avoided.   Publishers routinely tell authors to edit their respective manuscripts in order to avoid potential libel lawsuits (e.g., referring to Ventura by a different name, “Scruff,” and not mentioning Ventura’s name in the book). Kyle’s publisher, HarperCollins, likely did not bet on Kyle’s admission in an interview that “Scruff” was Ventura. Kyle’s confession serves as a warning to publishers that they cannot be too careful in fact checking and advising authors during the pre- and post-publication processes.

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Joseph Perry (@jperry325) is a 3L at St. John’s University whose goal is to become a publishing media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries.

Featured image courtesy of [Clyde Robinson via Flickr]

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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