Blade Runner 2049 (Photo: Shutterstock.com)

Litigators are story tellers. But do you want to be an Ernest Hemingway, terse and economical ("For sale: Baby shoes, never worn"), or a Herman Melville, veering off mid-Moby Dick to offer page after page of minute details on whale anatomy or the history of Nantucket?

I think it's safe to say that Edward Anderson is more of a Melville.

The founder of Santa Monica-based Anderson Yeh, he was scolded by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in the Central District of California for filing a 159-page complaint (plus an additional 72 pages of exhibits) that the judge called "needlessly repetitive and lengthy, with pages of unnecessary background and irrelevant details."

The suit—as flagged by The Hollywood Reporter—is uncommonly interesting. It involves the movie Blade Runner 2049 starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford and a multi-million dollar product placement fight between film producer Alcon Entertainment and automaker Peugeot over the movie's iconic flying car.

But…is the dispute 159 pages worth of interesting?

To some extent, the answer depends on the judge. Just as there are readers who relish Melville's digressions (though certainly not me when I read Moby Dick in 11th grade), some judges want—or demand—extensive factual background in a complaint.

Others, not so much.

Carney apparently falls in the latter category, dismissing Anderson's complaint without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 8(a), which requires a "short and plain statement of the claim." What he got instead, the judge said, was "rambling" and "without organization or structure," and "read like a magazine article."

Some background: On behalf of Alcon, Anderson filed suit last year against Peugeot, a Peugeot marketing executive and advertising and PR firm Publicis Media France SA for breach of contract and eight other causes of action.

According to Alcon, Peugeot agreed to pay Alcon a $500,000 product placement fee and also spend at least a $30 million on co-promotional media in exchange for making the Blade Runner 2049 flying car (called a "spinner") a Peugeot.

To hear Anderson tell it in the complaint, this was a truly awesome, amazing opportunity. The Blade Runner spinners are "among the most famous and recognizable automobiles in the history of film," he wrote.  Moreover, he continued, Blade Runner is "a piece of permanent art that transcends ephemeral popular culture" and "inclusion of a brand onscreen in a Blade Runner story can give a brand an almost mystical and timeless quality, and in any event clearly enhances the brand's legacy, for generations, if not forever."

Um, forever? So like 47 trillion years from now, everyone will still be blown away that the Blade Runner 2049 spinner was a Peugeot?

Hyperbole aside, it's not hard to see why Alcon felt wronged.

According to the complaint, the Peugeot trade dress was incorporated into the film, but shortly before the movie was released in October of 2017 (when it was too late to make any changes), the deal unraveled. Peugeot never promoted the film and allegedly refused to pay Alcon anything for the placement.

What went wrong? The complaint offers multiple theories. Perhaps PR firm Publicis deliberately ignored Peugeot's instructions. Or maybe Peugeot told Publicis to offer the $30 million co-promotional agreement but intended to renege this part of the deal? Or did the Peugeot marketing exec instruct Publicis to make the $30 million offer, but concealed this part of the deal from her supervisors at Peugeot?

Peugeot, represented by Hogan Lovells lawyers Colm Moran, Samaa Haridi and Alyssa Saviss, sidestepped the merits in protesting that the complaint "is replete with irrelevant and repetitive allegations.…It is unfair and unreasonable to require the Peugeot defendants to incur the substantial expense associated with preparing an answer admitting or denying each of the FAC's 400 paragraphs of allegations."

Steptoe & Johnson's Robyn Crowther on behalf of Publicis piled on, objecting to Alcon's "inability to choose a story, throwing claims that more closely resemble a plate of spaghetti."

While Carney previously sided with Alcon in refusing to dismiss the complaint based on lack of personal jurisdiction, he came down like an AP Lit teacher armed with a red pen in tossing the suit on Rule 8(a) grounds.

The complaint, he wrote, "delves into irrelevant examples of product placements and co-promotional agreements involving other films and other automotive companies ["Television advertisements for Audi that include footage of Daniel Craig as James Bond driving an Audi vehicle are telecast during prime television programming, such as a popular primetime television series or the telecast of a major sporting event, like a major college or professional football or basketball game."]. These details are unnecessary and distracting."

(Er, I actually thought the section about other product placement deals was fascinating, but maybe that's just me.)

Carney continued, "[T]he court is simply not persuaded that Alcon needs ten pages of background on California's entertainment industry to establish a prima facie basis for personal jurisdiction."

Anderson, who received his law degree from Berkeley in 1998, worked as in-house litigation counsel for Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. from 2003 to 2007 and as a studio executive at Twentieth Century Fox from 2012 to 2014.

(Also, his law firm bio is a whopping 1,250 words long and includes details about his classwork as an undergrad at Stanford and his stint before law school as a non-lawyer at Century City, California law firm Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs…so maybe brevity is not his strong suit.)

In an email, Anderson said, "It's a long complaint, largely driven by defendants who came up with complex factual arguments to avoid paying money for services clearly rendered. Judge Carney has directed the complaint to be cleaned up, so of course we will do so.  We appreciate that Judge Carney has agreed with Alcon that the court has jurisdiction over the parties' dispute and has left all of Alcon's substantive claims intact as to every defendant, subject to Alcon submitting a shorter and more concise pleading."

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