According to The Hollywood Reporter, former WWE Tag Team Champion Rene “Dupree” Goguen has filed a lawsuit against WWE over royalties and how they should be paid when content airs on the WWE Network.
The lawsuit, aiming to represent those who signed booking contracts for the WWE and other professional wrestling outfits between 1980 to the present, asserts breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment and a violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, with millions of dollars in alleged damages being sought. Clinton Krislov and Brenden Leydon are the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit was filed in a Connecticut Federal court yesterday, and Goguen has requested that the “booking contract” he signed in 2003, which gave WWE ownership of using his likeness and made it their intellectual property, be interpreted to include payment for “technology not yet created.” This is similar to a claim Jesse Ventura made years ago when he sued WWE for using his likeness on products that had not been created at the time that the footage was recorded, such as videotapes. Ventura won that case.
While WWE did not comment on the case attorney Jerry McDevitt told the Hollywood Reporter that the problem with this lawsuit is that Goguen signed a contract in 2011 that destroys his ability to bring these types of claims.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
