Legal Action Against Angus & Robertson
Once it became known that the film version of Breaker Morant was near release, the Australian publishing house Angus & Robertson re-issued an out-of-print, remaindered and not widely known 1973 novel, The Breaker, that had been written by Kit Denton.
It was issued with great gusto, with the original 1973 front cover, plus the factually incorrect announcement overlaid across one corner of the cover: "Soon to be made into a major film".
This announcement was incorrect for two reasons:
- it was Ross's play, not Denton's book, that was being made into a movie, and
- Denton's book was never used to create any part of the film script (a script for which Ross had been one of the writing team from start to finish).
In 1980, Ross took legal action against Angus & Robertson in the Supreme Court of South Australia for re-issuing the 1973 book with the factually incorrect announcement on the cover. With the support of crucial evidence provided by the film's director Bruce Beresford, Ross won his case. Angus & Robertson withdrew the 1979 version of Denton's book from sale, and trashed all the remaining copies.
Another, "revised" version of Denton's book (minus the cover announcement, and with a picture of actor Edward Woodward on the cover) was issued by Angus & Robertson in 1980, which sold considerably more copies than his earlier, 1973 version.
Ross's emphatic legal victory did not receive a lot of publicity at the time; and many people today still labour under the misapprehension that it was Kit Denton's 1973 book that was the source for the movie.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth G. Ross
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or action:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)