by Marc Eliot
Clint’s response, according to Locke, was to quickly agree to look at the script and to remind her that he still wanted to see a cassette of her TV movie. That last suggestion sent up a flag for Locke. Clint seemed a little too interested in that movie. Was he afraid it was some kind of exposé, something personal and revealing about their time together? Three weeks later she called him again, and she brought up the script, and he promised to see if he could get Warner to green-light it.
Despite the two phone calls, nothing happened with the script, but weird things continued to appen with her other potential projects. Lance Young, a former Paramount producer who had moved to Warner, wanted to hire Locke to direct a movie there. A friend who knew Young from Paramount told Locke that he had been told Warner would not work with her because she was “Clint’s deal.”
“Clint’s deal.” What could that possibly mean? Exasperated and confused, Locke changed agents again, this time signing with International Creative Management (ICM) to try once more to jump-start her career. She brought up her Warner “deal” with them. They looked into the situation and reported back to her that Warner was simply not going to make a film with her. Any film.
Early in 1994 Locke retained counsel with the intent to sue Warner Bros. for breach of contract. Her hope was that Warner would extend her contract by one year and give her at least one film that would fulfill the conditions of her signing off on her lawsuit against Clint. One film, she felt, was all she needed to regain her career momentum.
The response from Warner to Locke’s counsel was swift and direct. According to Locke, Terry Semel and Bob Daley made an insulting offer for her just to go away: “We have no interest in making any real deal with Sondra. We can give her a twenty-five-thousand-dollar settlement for her trouble, but that’s it.” Locke said no, moved out of her office at Warner, and necessarily changed lawyers because of her increasingly precarious financial condition. She acquired the services of Peggy Garrity, who, after reviewing all the facts involved, agreed to handle the case that Locke wanted to bring against both Clint and Warner on a contingency basis.
Winning a lawsuit against Warner was not going to be easy. Few witnesses would be willing to come forward and testify; for anyone looking ever to work again in Hollywood, it would be a career-ending move. Warner’s initial reaction to the filing of Locke’s suit was to shrug it off, claiming they simply had not been able to find anything for her; nor had she brought them anything that they felt was up to the studio’s extremely high standards. But they had given her a parking spot on the studio and a free turkey every Thanksgiving, proof of their good intentions, they said.
For the rest of 1994 and 1995 and through the summer of 1996, Locke, via David-like Garrity, took on Warner’s legal representation, the Goliath-like O’Melveny & Myers. Depositions were taken, during which Warner steadfastly maintained they had done nothing wrong. Not long afterward Garrity, sensing this was less a breach-of-contract case than one of actual fraud, a far more serious charge, urged Locke to add Clint to the lawsuit.* Locke agreed, Garrity filed, and in Locke’s words from her memoir, Warner “went ballistic and mounted a massive campaign to keep Clint out of the lawsuit.”
To Locke’s shock and dismay, the motion to add Clint was denied.
Garrity then asked Warner Bros., as part of discovery, for a copy of the final cost runs for Locke’s studio deal—everything that had been charged against her account in the entire three years. It was not an unusual request in these types of lawsuits. In order to find out how the studio would prepare its financial counterclaim, Locke needed to know how much money and service value Warner had advanced to her and her staff during that period.
Warner’s documents revealed debits totaling $975,000, not all that unusual for a three-year period. But what surely wasn’t normal operating procedure was that the entire amount had been transferred from Locke’s account at Warner to Clint’s, specifically folded into the overall budget and outlay production costs of Unforgiven. At first this was puzzling to Locke, as she had had absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of the production of that film. Then it hit her—Clint, she realized, was secretly paying the tab for her Warner deal. Only her Warner deal didn’t really exist, at least not according to the papers Warner had given over to discovery. Locke now believed that Clint must have set up a secret, false, sham deal with Warner, where it would look like Locke had a deal there but really didn’t. The whole thing was to be paid for by Clint, via Unforgiven, which meant that not a cent of the $975,000 actually came out of his own pockets. He had set it up in order to induce her to sign off on her original lawsuit for a relatively small amount, with the carrot-dangling promise of a deal at the studio to get her to settle.
The ramifications ran deep. If Clint had, in fact, charged that money to Unforgiven, then anyone else who had a profit-based deal connected to the film had also been defrauded by Clint and/or Malpaso, because the net profits of Unforgiven were based on all production costs and distribution and advertising expenses subtracted from the film’s gross. That could mean criminal charges somewhere down the line, and dozens of complicated and dangerous lawsuits both for the studio and for Clint.
Warner’s first response was that that simply wasn’t the case, because the money had come not from Warner or Malpaso but from his personal account. Garrity didn’t think so, at least not according to the documents.
At that point, more depositions were scheduled, but Clint refused his subpoena and ordered Malpaso to also refuse any subpoenas Garrity tried to serve on him. Warner then asked the court for an immediate judgment to remove them from the case without a trial. Such summary judgments are usually requested when one side or the other believes the case has no merit, or the evidence is insufficient and doesn’t merit a full trial. It is always a risk, because losing it usually indicates the judge believes the other side has a good enough case to bring. Asking for a summary judgment is like betting everything on red or black at a roulette table. This time the chips came down on Warner’s side.
Devastated, Locke only had two choices left: to appeal the court’s decision, which in a summary judgment is difficult, costly, time-consuming, and rarely successful; or to start a new lawsuit only against Clint for fraud. In other words, to start all over again, eliminating the studio from any further legal claims she had against them.
She did both.
This time Garrity filed the lawsuit in downtown Los Angeles, rather than in Burbank, where the first lawsuit had been filed. Bur-bank, she and Garrity felt, was just too close to Warner’s power center. That would make it even more difficult to find an objective jury, as everyone in Burbank was connected one way or another to the film business, the primary reason people lived in this otherwise nondescript, hot, humid, and isolated community. Now, Garrity decided, distance was their best defense.
Without bothering to notify Garrity, Ray Fisher, Clint’s attorney, responded by petitioning to have the case remain in Burbank. He succeeded and it was assigned to a different judge from the one who had heard and granted the summary judgment on the Warner case.
On the first day of trial, September 9, 1996, Fisher moved for dismissal for “nonsuit,” which is similar to summary judgment; Fisher insisted Locke had no case and wanted the judge to concur. The judge took the motion under advisement and, for the moment at least, let the case continue.
After opening statements, Locke and Garrity starting putting their witnesses on the stand. The first was Terry Semel, who, under direct examination by Garrity, shaped his answers to suggest that Warner had indeed been willing to do business with Locke during the three years she was under contract, but that nothing she brought to them they considered filmable. Garrity then sharpened her focus and asked Semel if he was aware of Clint’s “secret indemnity,” as she put it. Semel agreed that “I would assume that at the end of the day that his intentions were to underwrite the losses.” Garrity asked him when “the end of the day” was. Semel said that he guessed it was when the terms o
f the arrangement—the three-year contract—had ended.
No further questions.
The next day Locke took the stand, and Garrity led her through a detailed recapitulation of the terms of her original settlement and everything that had happened—or not happened—in the three years she was at Warner. That evening, as Locke left the courthouse, she was intercepted by Kevin Marks, Clint’s full-time personal attorney, who had attended the trial. Earlier that day, on the way into the courthouse’s parking lot, Locke had been in a car accident, smashing her front end. Marks just wanted to tell her that he had seen the whole thing and was willing to testify in her defense when she sued the other driver.
The next day Locke was cross-examined by Fisher, who went over the terms of the first lawsuit settlement, emphasizing along the way, no doubt for the jury’s sake, the fact that all the while Locke was seeing Clint, she had been married to another man.
After a few more witnesses it was Garrity’s time to put Clint on the stand. He was going to have to answer all of Garrity’s questions under oath. She was swift and to the point, focusing in on what she thought was the most essential aspect of the case. Taking a deep breath and exhaling, she asked Clint if he had entered into an agreement with Locke in 1990 to settle her lawsuit against him.
In a soft and steady voice, he said he had. He then also admitted that he had made a separate agreement with Warner Bros. to indemnify them for all of Locke’s expenses during the three years of her contract with them; that he had not told Locke of the arrangement; and that he had not offered Locke any type of similar deal during that period with Malpaso. That was it. Garrity was finished with him, and he was dismissed from the witness stand.
After a few more days and several other witnesses, Garrity rested and Clint’s defense took over. Soon it was Clint’s turn to take the stand in his own defense. He was upbeat and expansive as Fisher led him through his testimony. Then Fisher got to Clint’s relationship with Locke.
FISHER: What was your opinion of Ms. Locke once the 1989 lawsuit was settled?
CLINT: My feelings were the normal feelings you have when someone has been planning for many months to assault your children’s inheritance … Well, you know, I didn’t feel very good about it, I must say …
Clint went on to express his dismay and his feeling that he was suffering from “social extortion.”
After a few minor disruptions—a reporter had smuggled a camera into the courtroom—and several objections from Garrity, Fisher asked Clint if he had had any intention to commit fraud. Clint said no, adding that it would make no sense for him to use his influence to prevent Locke from getting work at Warner because, according to his deal, he would have to pay for her contract if she didn’t earn any money. He then insisted that despite his best efforts, it was Warner, not he, that chose not to green-light Locke’s various proposals.
During cross-examination Garrity tried to get Clint to admit that he had tapped Locke’s phones, something Locke had long suspected, which Clint denied. She then went over the terms of his indemnification deal regarding Locke, which Clint corrected, reminding her and the court that his deal had been with Warner, to indemnify them, not with Locke.
When Garrity let Clint off the stand, Fisher, who had vehemently objected to several of Garrity’s questions, moved for a mistrial. The jury was removed, and Fisher insisted the jury should not have heard any testimony about wiretaps. The motion was denied, and with the jury still out, the judge broke for lunch.
Among the defense’s final witnesses was Tom Lassally, who admitted under cross-examination that Clint had never talked to him about any of Locke’s proposed projects.
Final arguments began September 19, 1996. Garrity crisply summed up the case, as she saw it, finishing in less than a half hour. It was then Fisher’s turn. He worked slowly and methodically, taking several hours to work his way through his version of the facts of the case and why it should be decided in Clint’s favor. As he came to the conclusion of his summation, he made what sounded like a very solid point—the crux of his argument—that Clint had been under no legal obligation to tell Locke about his indemnification of Warner; that it was a completely separate deal totally unrelated to the terms of her settlement with him.
When Fisher finished, the judge instructed the jury and sent them out to decide the case. After three days of deliberation, the jury asked for a definition of “legal” as it pertained to whether Clint was under a “legal” obligation to inform Locke of his indemnification deal with Warner.
The next day, a Saturday, Garrity called Locke to tell her that she had just received a call from Fisher, who said he wanted to talk over the possibility of a settlement. At this point Locke was adamant; she didn’t want to settle. This had been a long and difficult battle for her, and she was determined to see it through. When Garrity conveyed Locke’s decision to Fisher, he pressed Garrity to prevail upon her client to reconsider. He stressed that a verdict was certain to damage at least one and possibly both of their clients’ careers, and that no one can ever be sure what a jury will do.
Locke talked again with Garrity and took her suggestion to at least think it over. The next day Locke agreed to listen to Clint’s offer. Fisher delivered it, and after deliberating once more with Garrity, she decided to accept. The only condition imposed by Clint was that the amount of money not be revealed to anyone. Locke agreed. The announcement that the case had settled brought a slew of reporters to the courthouse steps and interviews with several of the released jurors, all of whom claimed that they had already decided in favor of Locke, and that the penalty for Clint would have been in the millions.
A few days later Fisher first threatened to withhold the money and then wanted papers signed; Garrity ignored the first and refused the second. After much grumbling, Fisher personally handed over the check, and Clint’s involvement with Locke was finally over, leaving Locke a little richer, Clint a little poorer. Both of them, after their fourteen-year romantic and six-year litigious relationship, appeared to be finally and forever free of each other.*
Although he almost never talked about his relationship with Locke after that, he did at least one time, to Playboy, during an interview he gave in 1997:
I guess maybe I’m the only one who finds it weird that she’s still obsessed with our relationship and putting out the same old rhetoric almost ten years later. There are two sides to this whole thing … she’s been married for 29 years, but nobody puts that in their stories. As far as the legal action goes, it was my fault. I have to take full responsibility because I thought I was doing her a favor by helping her get a production arrangement with Warner Bros. I prevailed upon Warner Bros. to do it and it didn’t work out. So she sued Warner and then she sued me and finally at some point I said, wait a second, I would have been better off if I hadn’t done anything and had let her go ahead and file the palimony suit against me. I tried to help. I thought she would get directing assignments, but it didn’t work out that way … I should have known that it ould come back to haunt me … but you go on with your business. I’m going on with my life, and if other people can’t get on with theirs, that’s their problem.
Clint was not present for the handing over of his settlement check, leaving that to Fisher. Free at last from his tar-baby relationship with Locke, he took the next logical step in the never-ending drama of his own real life.
He became a father again, for the seventh time. And he got married again, for only the second time, to the baby’s mother, who was thirty-five years his junior and three years younger than his firstborn, Kyle.
*According to Locke, in her memoir, once the deal was dead, Schwarzenegger took the concept to Ivan Reitman, who eventually made a reworked version of it without her into Junior, starring Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
*Clint was no stranger to litigation. As early as 1984 he sued the National Enquirer over an article that had linked him romantically with Tanya Tucker. He asked for $10 million and settled out of court. He sued th
em again in 1994 over their publication of a so-called exclusive interview, and won $150,000 in 1995 that was held up on appeal in 1997. He donated it to a charity (which he did not name). His legal team was awarded $650,000 for legal fees.
*This was a civil lawsuit. Only the state can bring criminal charges.
*Several sources list the settlement of the fraud case against Clint—the second lawsuit—as 1999. In fact, it was settled in 1996. Locke’s autobiography, which includes details of the settlement (but not the amount), was published in 1997. In it she discussed the case at length. Clint’s only public comment was to Playboy in March 1997, when he told interviewer Bernard Weinraub that Locke played the victim very well. He indicated that he believed her history of cancer had made her more sympathetic to the jury. Although the terms of the settlement have never been disclosed, it was rumored to have been between $10 million and $30 million. (Some sources report the figure to be closer to $7 million.) After the settlement, Locke directed one more movie and appeared in two others. Her last known assignment in Hollywood was in 1999. She still lives there, for more than a decade now with Scott Cunneen, a director of surgery at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Finally, in 1999, Locke sued Warner (but not Clint) yet again, this time for collusion, and won yet another out-of-court settlement with another undisclosed financial amount and a new production deal that has not yet resulted in any new films.
