Judge Tanya Acker, Justice Patricia M. DiMango, and Judge Michael Corriero on CBS Television Distribution's syndicated court show HOT BENCH, created by Judge Judy Sheindlin. Photo courtesy of Hot Bench TV

Courtroom divorce battles aren't normally in Lit Daily's purview—but the fight between Randall Douthit and his ex-wife Patrice Jones is hardly typical.

At stake: the genesis of the hit television show "Hot Bench." 

For those of you who don't spend a lot of time watching daytime reality television (i.e. every single Lit Daily reader until possibly three weeks ago), "Hot Bench" bills itself as offering "a new twist to the court genre, with the first-ever three judge panel, taking you inside the courtroom and into their chambers as they deliberate."

Also, all the judges are extremely attractive. (i.e. they're hot, get it? Plus they ask a lot of questions. It's a legitimately clever name, though perhaps the double meaning is lost on some viewers.)

Since its debut in 2014, the show has been wildly popular. According to Forbes, "Hot Bench" has an average daily audience of 3 million, making it the third-rated daytime TV show, behind "Judge Judy" and "Dr. Phil."

Which is to say, it's worth fighting over—and both sides lawyered up appropriately.

Jones on appeal tapped Kasowitz Benson Torres partner Jerold Oshinsky—a legendary insurance litigator who for years was a name partner at now-defunct Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Douthit—executive producer of both "Judge Judy" and "Hot Bench" —retained a Sidley Austin team led by David Carpenter, a partner in the firm's appellate and Supreme Court practice, who worked with trial counsel from Hersh Mannis.

Last week, an appeals court in California (featuring three actual judges) sided with Douthit, rejecting his ex-wife's attempt to get a piece of "Hot Bench."

The underlying case is worthy of a reality television episode of its own. As Carpenter in an interview put it, "It's almost a Perry Mason-style story." 

Some background: When Douthit first met Jones, she was a 21-year-old freelance model with a 10th grade education, according to a prior decision by California's Second District. They moved in together almost immediately and married on January 28, 1995. They separated 12 and a half years later on July 24, 2007, and did not have any children together.

Douthit was required to pay Jones more than $6.3 million in temporary and permanent spousal support from 2007 until 2018—an amount that she unsuccessfully argued was not enough, according to the decision.

A few months after Jones lost her first appeal in 2015, she claimed to have discovered an omitted asset—a treatment for a television show idea called "Legal Eagles" that she said provided the concept for "Hot Bench."

Jones said she stumbled on it after her gardener brought her some boxes from Douthit's home. In one box, she said she found a computer disc with a single file—the "Legal Eagles" idea, plus a cover sheet that said "Created by Randall Douthit" and dated 2005.

The trial court never got to the question of whether "Legal Eagles" was in fact the inspiration for "Hot Bench." And indeed, the concepts are a bit different—"Legal Eagles" involved one judge and two young attorneys rather than three judges. (Also the name is nowhere near as good.)

Douthit, for his part, said he'd never seen the "Legal Eagles" treatment before, and "declared that the concept for Hot Bench came from Judge [Judy] Sheindlin in 2013; he was never credited as a creator or co-creator and had no ownership in it," Carpenter wrote. 

Instead, the lower court focused first on whether the "Legal Eagles" treatment was community property and thus subject to division upon divorce.

The answer? No.  And that's where some impressive sleuthing by Douthit's legal team seems to have tipped the balance. 

At trial, according to the appellate decision, Jones presented a computer forensics expert "who testified that the computer disc's metadata showed the treatment had been saved on November 10, 2006."

But it was hardly a "gotcha" moment. 

On cross, the expert "admitted it would be easy to manipulate the metadata, and he would not be able to detect such manipulation in his analysis," wrote Presiding Justice Laurence D. Rubin, who was joined by justices Lamar Baker and Dorothy Kim. "He further confirmed that the metadata showed the file's author as 'Patrice Jones'—meaning the login used on the computer at the time the document was saved to the disc was "Patrice Jones'—and that the document was 'last edited by Patrice Jones.'"

That's not all. 

Jones filed two ever-so-slightly different versions of the treatment with the court—even though she said she only found one computer file. 

Here, the Sidley brief did an excellent job highlighting nine tiny textual differences between two documents that should have been identical. One version of the treatment, for example, said that "The judge will render the final verdicts," whereas the other said "The Judge will render the final verdicts"—with the word "Judge" capitalized.

One version says "closing arguments"—plural—while the other says "closing argument"—singular. One says "A couple of weeks later," while the other omits "of" and reads "A couple weeks later."

"Wife provided no explanation for these discrepancies," the appellate panel noted.

But the coup de grace came when defense counsel from Hersh Mannis unearthed an article published by Insurance Journal on February 14, 2008—three years after the "Legal Eagles" treatment was supposedly created. 

The article was about a Connecticut appellate decision, Maureen Murphy v. Lord Thompson Manor, Inc.. The case involved a bride-to-be who was awarded $15,000 "for emotional distress following a 'Shakespearean drama of confusion and lost opportunities' that resulted in her having to move her wedding location two years after booking it," the Insurance Journal article stated, quoting from the Connecticut court's decision issued in January of 2008.

The "Legal Eagles" treatment dated 2005 included a script titled "Lord of the Weddings" about a bride-to-be named Maureen Murphy and her finance, who were suing "for their deposit and 15 K for emotional distress for a 'Shakespearean drama of confusion and lost opportunities' that resulted in her having to move her wedding location two years after booking it."

Coincidence? 

Yeah right. 

The trial court "drew reasonable inferences from this evidence that the treatment was created post-2007, after the date of the separation," the Second District panel held. "Substantial evidence supported the court's finding."

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