Lisa Kudrow loses $1.6 million 'Friends' lawsuit
| Santa Monica, Calif.
A California jury has ordered Lisa Kudrow to pay her former manager $1.6 million in residuals from her work on "Friends."
The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury returned its verdict Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Scott Howard. He claimed he had an oral agreement with the actress and was owed a percentage of her earnings on the hit NBC sitcom in syndication.
Radar Online reports that "Howard first sued Kudrow in 2008 after she let him go earlier in the year and throughout the course of the trial it was revealed that the Friends star first made $13,500 per episode of the hit show but later negotiated her way up to $1.04 million per episode plus $5 million in other compensation."
"Originally, the judge in the case ruled in favor of Kudrow on summary judgment. But in August of 2012, an appeals court revived the dispute by saying the judge had improperly excluded the testimony of Howard's expert witness Martin Bauer, a longtime Hollywood agent, manager and executive.
On the witness stand, Bauer testified that managers are paid in perpetuity on all gigs their clients take while being represented by the manager. The witness said he had never had a commission cut off because he had been fired. "I would never make that deal," he told the jury. "The only consequence of a termination is on future projects."
Kudrow contended that she had already paid Howard more than $11 million in 16 years as her manager before they parted ways in 2007.
Kudrow's attorney, Gerald Sauer, says the verdict will be appealed.
Kudrow starred on "Friends" from 1994 to 2004.
