This long-running and very ugly case just gets more and more twisted:
Attorney Bertram Fields won't discuss why he wants to withdraw from a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over Winnie the Pooh royalties, but his legal adversary Friday suggested a reason that he said threatens to derail the case.
Walt Disney Co.'s lead counsel, Daniel Petrocelli, said Fields' motive may be related to a motion recently filed by Petrocelli alleging that the heirs to the Pooh royalties may have engaged in unethical, if not criminal, conduct.
He alleges that a private investigator working on behalf of the family broke into Disney offices in 1994 to steal documents relating to Pooh and that the family covered up the incident until earlier this year.
As a result, Petrocelli is seeking to have the entire case dismissed.
He contends that Fields' firm is now in an uncomfortable ethical position because one of his clients, Patricia Slesinger, recently changed her testimony about her knowledge of the investigator's activities. A year ago, Slesinger said she didn't know what the investigator was doing, but gave a more detailed account in a recent deposition, Petrocelli said.
The LA Times has all the details here. My earlier posts about the case are here.