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The pending retrial of Nicollette Sheridan’s Desperate Housewives wrongful dismissal case has been put on ice by the California Court of Appeals. In a ruling issued Friday the court said, “it is further ordered that the retrial currently set for September 10 is hereby stayed pending further order of the court.” The appeals court ruling seems to agree with defendant Touchstone Television Productions and ABC Studios that it is not wrongful termination under state law when a contract renewal is not exercised. However, Sheridan’s lawyer Mark Baute points out the court order notes the case can be examined under Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s labor code violations. Baute also says the court wants the wrongful termination claim more fully laid out and he will be filing those briefs soon. “The temporary stay is designed to clarify and resolve those issues before the September trial starts,” says Baute. Adam Levin, ABC’s main lawyer in the case, did not respond to a request for comment. A hearing is set for August 9 for trial Judge Elizabeth Allen White to make her case for a retrial.
Sheridan’s first case against Touchstone, ABC Studios, ABC Entertainment and Desperate Housewives’ Executive Producer Marc Cherry ended in a mistrial on March 19 when the jury was deadlocked. Cherry was dismissed as a defendant before the end of the first trial and would not have been a defendant in any retrial. Sheridan has contended that her character was suddenly killed off in early 2009 because of complaints she made over an alleged head-hitting incident on the Desperate Housewives set with executive producer and series creator Cherry on Sept. 24, 2008. The three weeks of the first trial saw a parade of former ABC executives, such as former ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson and former ABC Studios boss Mark Pedowitz, and both Sheridan and Cherry, among others, take the stand. Desperate Housewives aired its final episode on May 13, 2012.
Related: ‘Desperate Housewives’: Nicollette Sheridan Lawyers Fight For Retrial
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who hasn’t been smacked by an exec???
This is the shitty business we all choose
Why would sn actor go through all this drama? It seems Sheridan won’t be wirking anytime soon. Here’s hoping she has been engaging in a whole lot if saving.
That’s garbage.
She had 8 of the 9 votes necessary to win her case and she doesn’t get a new trial?
Bullcrap.
What actor or actress hasn’t has their contract not renewed? ABC is known for killing off characters in shows every season. Look at Lost my favorite characters was killed off the first season, and subsequent characters were killed off each season. You don’t see them suing. That is far from wrongful termination, it’s show business. This whole suit was odd in the first place, and imagine, she pulls this in a place like Hollywood. Just amazing.
You’re desperate when you are thinking about going to OSHA for something like this.
No one would ever have heard about this “assault” if she hadn’t been pushed out. It was the only straw she could grasp. Her accounts of the incident went from a tap, to a slap, to a violent hit upside the head to a sizeable wallop.
This seems to be a classic case in which even if she wins the battle, she’s going to lose the war–it’s not like her career was going so amazingly well before she was Cherry picked
for D.H. Now what network would EVER hire her again? I’m not weighing in on the merits of her case because I don’t have an opinion one way or the other, although I suspect they wrote her off the show because the two of them clearly didn’t get along (duh) But she should just move on. My opinion.:)
Sheridan will work again. Count on it.
This is ridiculous, if there wasn’t enough evidence then it would not have gone to trial and since it did and it ended in a Hung jury in which a majority was in favor of Sheridan– all the more another trial should be given
actors get fired, story lines change, if everything stayed the same nobody would watch next season. i dont think many people will be hiring you best look for a new career
Jake things don’t work the way you think they do. Judges routinely let cases go to trial because they are afraid to dismiss them. Usually
because of the negative publicity they would get. The American public wrongly assumes that letting these trials occur is a good thing.
The majority of the jury did not decide that NS was wrongfully dismissed, it decided it liked her better than the suits. If another
actress had been brought in to to play the part then she might have had a case. They didn’t, she didn’t, end of story.
LOL @ this comment.
What negative publicity? Seriously, name a judge that received “negative publicity” for dismissing a case. And no googling, because if this was such a problem you could name someone off the top of your head.
Judges in this state have packed dockets due to cutbacks, and right now are looking for any relief than can get. For awhile, Riverside Superior Court was not setting any trial dates for civil cases due to how busy they were with just the criminal stuff. In a situation like this, granting demurrers, MSJs, motions to change venue, motions to compel arbitration, etc, are all in play.
Even in this case, the judge struck many of the causes of action before allowing the rest to proceed.
Amazing it was one juror that whole-heartedly derailed her case and it ended up a mistrial and now there’s the possibility she won’t get a new trial. Nobody in Hollywood would want to work with her or Cherry for that matter.
My only concern; Why would anyone have a right to touch another with out that person’s permission. This is a form of Bullying, if in fact the incident occurred as stated by Nicollette, the case should be Retried. The Jury apparently felt her testimony was a true and correct as stated by her, perhaps their should be a form of Omnibus Hearing to clear the way for a new trial. California’s Courts, well, they’re pretty messed up…..They swing way to far to the LEFT of the Constitution for one thing, for the other, they Legislate from the BENCH…:(