Nash v. Cbs, Inc.

899 F.2d 1537 (7th Cir. 1990)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P is obsessed with John Dillinger. P believes that Dillinger did not die at the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. In Dillinger: Dead or Alive? (1970), and The Dillinger Dossier (1983), P maintains that Dillinger learned about the trap and dispatched Jimmy Lawrence, a small-time hoodlum who looked like him, in his stead. P claims the FBI kept the switch quiet. D points to discrepancies between Dillinger's physical characteristics and those of the corpse: Dillinger had a scar on his upper lip and the corpse did not; Dillinger lacked a tooth that the corpse possessed; Dillinger had blue eyes, the corpse brown eyes; Dillinger's eyebrows were thicker than those of the corpse. Although Dillinger's sister identified the dead man, D found the circumstances suspicious, and he is struck by the decision of Dillinger's father to encase the corpse in concrete before burial. P claims the FBI planted Dillinger's fingerprints in the morgue. P tracked Dillinger to the west coast, where Dillinger married. P believes that he survived at least until 1979. The Dillinger Dossier contains pictures of a middle-aged couple and then an elderly man who, P believes, is Dillinger in dotage. P provided capsule versions of his conclusions in his Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present (1973), and his expose Citizen Hoover (1972). D's version of the Dillinger story has not won adherents among historians -- or the FBI. In 1984 D broadcast an episode of its Simon and Simon series entitled The Dillinger Print. D recreated P's theories in Ds' own words in a dramatized fashion. A police investigation later reveals that the gun used to kill an ex-FBI agent at the beginning of the episode bears the fresh fingerprints of John Dillinger. At the end of the episode, it was proven that SODDIT (Some Other Dude Did It) and it was a frame-up by a guy who was not Dillinger. Of course, they leave open the possibility that Dillinger was never killed and lived to a ripe old age. P sued Ds claiming the copyrights on his four books were violated. The court determined that the books' copyrighted material consists of P's presentation and exposition, not in any of the historical events. Ds moved for summary judgment in that access to P's books was for the copying of the books' factual material. The court held that Ds did not appropriate any of the material protected by P's copyrights.