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UPDATED: Judge Elizabeth Allen White has declared a mistrial in Nicollette Sheridan‘s wrongful termination suit against ABC Studios and ABC Entertainment. The judge took her action, as she said she would, after the 12-person jury came back to court today unable to resolve their 8-4 deadlock of late last week. Lawyers for both sides say they will seek a new trial in the case revolving around Sheridan’s departure from Desperate Housewives. Defense lawyer Adam Levin told Deadline that White has set an April 13 meeting to determine a retrial date. “The jury is now hung on the single wrongful termination claim,” Levin told Deadlne. “We’re ready to retrial and we’re confident we will prevail.”
The jurors were polled in court this morning as to whether they wanted more time to deliberate or whether further closing arguments from both sides would be helpful. Every single juror said “no.” The judge had asked the panel to take the weekend to consider its position. The jury foreman did tell the court that the 8-4 split in the civil case was in Sheridan’s favor.
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Enough with the trial. No one cares.
What a ridiculous comment. Sheridan and ABC most definitely care.
Yes, but they’re the only ones who do.
Perhaps, the 8-4 in favor of Sheridan might lead to an out of court settlement?
Do we know that the 8 were in her favor? I’m an idiot when it comes to legal information.
how about reading?
abc needs to settle. they are so stubborn. you have an 8-4 vote against you and you think you are gonna be able to turn that around in a new trial to 9-3 minimum in your favor?
so this is gonna go on long after housewives is gone and marc cherry can stop pretending he’s a good showrunner.
Wow! She was so close. The defense is going to really have to try harder for the re-trial. They should just settle at this point.
That’s not how the studios’ biz affairs and legal teams work. The fact that they got 4 to deadlock means they convinced just enough jury members that they don’t have to pay. They’d rather roll the dice again with those odds than pay out 6 million….and why not? Best case scenario they pay nothing. Worst case scenario they have to pay in the neighborhood of 6M after the next go round. They’ll take the chance on paying nothing every time.
Besides, next time around the defense will have figured out how to plug the mystery deleted email hole, which likely had an effect on the jurors who voted for the plantiff.
Stories about her behavior/unprofessionalism have gone around for years. No wonder they fired her. I don’t feel a damn bit sorry for her and could care less about this embarrassing trial. Nothing worse than someone who regularly acts like a b-word, then asks for an apology when she’s let go. Just go away already, Nicollette.
So “Could care less,” exactly how much less could you care?
She/he could care lesser and not post, saving herself/himself some embarrassment. Oh, and re Sheridan, you’re as big a liar as Marc Cherry. Marc is that you?
ah… stories have gone on for years? please explain. give us some factual details about these stories lol. she has a right to sue and i dont think it affects your life one iota. so relax.
FINALLY, someone who actually knows Nicollette and all her bad behavior her ENTIRE career. She has stiffed everyone who has ever made her money in her career, as well as contractors, painters and everyone who is renovating her multi million dollar house in Hidden Hills. It’s no wonder that she is grabbing at what she can get now before she goes back into the c-rated shadows of Hollywood.
This seems like such a waste of the court’s time and our tax dollars.
For someone that ‘Could care less,” you’re not only reading about the trial, but taking the time to comment about it.
Sounds like you have more invested than you’re letting on.
Still waiting to hear the results (if any) from the computer of the Housewives worker??
Must have been nothing to find. If they had found something, they sure would have found a way to admit it into evidence. Seems like their insider threw himself under the bus for nothing.
The judge should have included the alternate jurors for a 14 person jury she had that legal latitude and she should have told them it has to be a 10 to 4 vote and send all of them back in for another two days. She is stupid and she is now responsible for this mistrial the alternate jurors sat there and heard all the testimony they are fully informed and could have helped reach a verdict. It will be an incredible waste of court time and tax dollars to do this all over.
Get ‘em, Nicolette! Get those liars and hit them in the pockets. Hit ‘em real good.
It seems only fair to give a high profile actor used to make a show famous a minimum of at least one season advance pay with the notice of termination.
Sheridan has always been a favorite, why is she being treated so badly.
Get real.
Her character was written off rather abruptly. The show was kind of blah without Edie stirring up trouble.
Cherry & Sheridan deserve each other. They both suck. Too bad they’re tying up public resources with their grudge match.
At least Sheridan will never work again. Not so for Cherry.
In a retrial, Sheridan’s lawyer could no longer throw a last round sucker punch with the surprise witness. It’s also a truism that a retrial is an advantage for the stronger legal team: they do better not only learning from the mistakes of the first trial, but also seizing on deviations from earlier testimony.
It’s of course also possible that the “bring on the retrial” statement is a bluff to try reducing the size of any potential settlement.
ABC will settle this they won’t want to pay Levin and his associates all that money to go back to court on this because the odds are Nicolette will win next time and if she does they have to pay her the full amount or spend even more money to appeal. She got lucky with the hung jury. Her lawyer will advise her to take the money ABC offers them which will be forthcoming this week.
The sooner ABC gets rid of this the less they have to pay Levin he can start charging them for his prep work and they have already paid him enough. They should have settled this before the jury was seated for this trial the only reason they didn’t is because they were afraid of upsetting Cherry they hope to make more money from him in the future but they should have told him to pay her himself. Just goes to show how pathetic and what desperate network executives they are.
Hey Desperate Executives, what’s with the snarky comments directed at ABC’s lead counsel? News flash, if this were just about the money, or the cost of defense counsel, the case would have settled before trial or last week when it was clear the jurors were hopelessly deadlocked. From what I heard, Levin and his team did an excellent job defending ABC. In fact, including this case, there have been 4 substantial jury trials pitting “talent” against media co’s in the last 2-3 years (Celador/Disney, Don Johnson/Rysher and Ladd/Warners). In the others, each media co was represented by first-rate counsel, and they all lost big. I’d say Adam beat the odds and he deserves kudos not ignorant insults from someone who can’t seem to figure out how to end a sentence by hitting the “.” key. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
The defense needed to overcome a botched HR investigation – Cherry was never interviewed, nor was Nicollette. Internal emails showed a coverup, including initially keeping the incident from management. Pedowitz ordered an HR investigation after reading about the attack in the National Enquirer. Budget emails that showed an intent to keep Edie on the show the following season as late as January 2009. Two writers told the truth about the timing. Wind lied. Cherry lied. ABC bought witnesses by rehiring people who had been terminated so it could control their testimony, including multiple writers, HR personnel, and a director. ABC never examined private email boxes from the producers, all of whom used aol or yahoo addreses, rather than abc.com emails. Witneses were browbeat. Once ABC realized it was getting sued, it made Nicollette come back for a bogus 15 second “ghost” scene after producers confirmed that if she failed to do so, she would be in breach of her contract. ABC is nasty. Do not think for a second that they did not wipe harddrives as alleged. That is the only explanation for the manifest lack of documentary evidence.
And, Levin is a tool.
I knew this was going to happen…she needed the 9th vote to win the case but because of this and not wanting the trial to drag on even longer, the judge had no other choice but we’re now back to square one. Maybe the two sides can come to some kind of settlement to avoid another trial and get this done and ove with but her reputation has been damaged as a result where nobody would want to work with her now. Cherry is no angel in this either.
Settle, Settle, Settle. Litigation is never a winning propsition. Figure out terms that are in everyone’s best interest and moved forward.
Abc claims Sheridan was not mistreated???
Then why haven’t they ever dumped one of the other leads???……..
wrongful termination, pay up abc creeps !!!!!!!