Lowenfels v. Nathan

2 F. Supp. 73, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1591
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedDecember 28, 1932
StatusPublished
Cited by33 cases

This text of 2 F. Supp. 73 (Lowenfels v. Nathan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lowenfels v. Nathan, 2 F. Supp. 73, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1591 (S.D.N.Y. 1932).

Opinion

WOOLSEY, District Judge.

The motion to dismiss the complaint is granted with eosts which will include an allowance for counsel fees to all the defendants, in whose behalf this motion is made, in the amounts hereinafter fixed and allocated respectively to each of them.

I. This is a suit by the author of what is described as.an operatic tragedy and is called “U. S. A. With Music” which he alleges was composed by him between 1924 and 1930, inclusive, published on or about January 13, 1931, and copyrighted on February 17, 1931, in the United States.

It is claimed that the defendants Kaufman, Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin, as authors, and the other defendants as composers, producers and publishers of “Of Thee I Sing,” a musical_ satire burlesquing politics in this country, have infringed the plaintiff’s copyright in that the defendants’ play parallels the second act of the plaintiff’s tragedy which it is alleged has unique originality and excellence and contains novel scenes unlike any known to have been produced before.

The thirteenth paragraph of the complaint alleges that the defendants Kaufman, Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin falsely represented themselves to be the authors of the themes and main features of the play entitled “Of Thee I Sing,” although they knew that they had plagiarized, pirated, and copied it from the second act of the plaintiff’s operatie tragedy “U. S. A. With Music.”

The complaint prays for the usual injunction against the defendants and for an accounting by them of their profits and the plaintiff’s damages.

On September 6, 1932, an order was entered on stipulation by the counsel herein amending the complaint so that there should be annexed to the complaint in book form as schedules thereto and parts thereof, a copy of the plaintiff’s play “U. S. A. With Music,” and of the defendants’ play “Of Thee I Sing.”

II. The annexation of these two hooks to, and their incorporation in, the hill of complaint was apparently arranged by counsel in order to enable the court conveniently t.o deal with this cause by such a motion as has been herein made. That purpose is achieved because the annexation of these two books to the complaint prevents this motion to dismiss from being involved in any awkward admissions of conclusions of fact, such as the above mentioned allegations of plagiarism and copying by the authors of “Of Thee I Sing” from the second act of “U. S. A. With Music,” because the annexation of the two books constitute an amendment to the complaint which supersedes by the realities the allegations of conclusions of fact which I have mentioned.

The procedure followed is hold and intelligent and, it seems to me, constitutes an appropriate method of dealing with a copyright suit of this kind for it enables me, on the record before me, to decide this cause by following the pragmatic method of compar *75 ing the two books, cf. Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, 45 F.(2d) 119, 123 (C. C. A. 2); and in view of the time which is saved hy avoiding' a trial under the procedure adopted, 1 think that it should become the usual method of dealing' with copyright suits, unless, owing to nice questions of originality or access, oral evidence is indicated as necessary.

III. A comparison of the two plays by means of the following summaries, which I have based on summaries made by counsel for the defendants and submitted at the time of the argument, will well illustrate the essential difference hi their respective treatment of the American scene from which each is drawn.

A. “U. S. A. With Music,” the plaintiff’s play is fairly summarized as follows:

Act I. The play opens in Kinneltown, a boom town that has sprung uj> in Kentucky because Arthur Kinnel has been entombed for days in a cave by a landslide which has closed the entrance thereof.

The atmosphere is like that of a carnival or a circus. Concessionaires are operating noisily. Real estate lots are being sold.

Tbe attempted rescue of Kinnel, the entombed man, is carried on to the accompaniment of every instrument of modern publicity.

Newspaper men rush around barking out the latest developments in terms of future headlines. News of the progress of the rescue and of all other current happenings are broadcast by an announcer to the waiting crowds, who are under the direction of trained cheer leaders. Among other items of information, an announcer reads a bulletin from Brinkle-Dinglebat murder trial to the effect that a character referred to as the Goose Girl, who herself appears in the later acts, has given birth to a nine-pound boy whilst on the witness stand, and, consequently, had to retire therefrom. There is speculation on the effect of this unusual occurrence on the murder trial.

A Committee on Investigation investigates the State Commission on Rescue. Rescuers resign and are supplanted. The Happiness Boys are made rescuers.

Rumors are rife that the whole thing is a publicity stunt, that Kinnel is not really buried. Movie rights for the rescue of the dying man and the publication rights of his diary, if any, are being traded in.

In all the hysterical activity, the only person who is really interested in Kinnel’s fate is his brother, Alfred, who is almost insane with indignation because of the indifference and callousness that is at the bottom of all this commercial exploitation of his brother’s danger.

Among the concessionaires is a Mr. Zero, who is running a stand at which one may throw baseballs at hums, three shots for a quarter. However, his bums arc not alive; they are the ghosts of sixteen of the thirty nonunion men who were slain during the coal strike at Herrin, 111., in 1922, and were buried unidentified in a ditch.

Zero is convinced that the country will never be right until these Herrin dead are decently buried and their ghosts thus laid. Zero’s mission is to sell this idea to the country. He is at Kinneltown because the interest of the country is focussed upon it now, and he can get the attention of all of the 120,000,000 people of the country. He explains that the center of the population shifts very quickly these days, that it shifts with the news, with Lindbergh, with a big murder trial, or with a deadlocked political convention at Chicago.

Among the visitors to Kinneltown are Henry and Mary Patterson and their daughter Mabel. Zero explains his purpose in life to her; her interest quickly deepens into love; they decide to get married. Zero is a member of the society for companionate marriage and must have a trial marriage for a, year. Mabel is willing to marry Zero and her parents are agreeable until they learn of the companionate marriage plan, and to this they object violently.

Zero and Mabel 11 ee to Chicago where a political convention is in progress.

In the meantime, Kinnel had been found dead by a dynamiter named Jim, who managed to blast his way into the cave.

Act II. The setting of the second act is in the Coliseum at Chicago, where the deadlocked National convention of the Demopublican party has been suspended for a week in order that a six-day bicycle race ma.y take place.

Tliis race is no ordinary sporting event. It is the hopeless struggle of Sacco and Vanzetti for their lives against the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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Bluebook (online)
2 F. Supp. 73, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1591, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lowenfels-v-nathan-nysd-1932.