Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and, most of all, the lawyers behind it all.

This week, Felicia Sonmez vs WaPo, Justin Theroux vs his nightmare neighbor, the AMC apes vs Adam Aron, and much, much more.

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• Sonmez v. WaPo: The News Guild just filed a notice that it’s appealing a judge’s ruling, earlier this month, that The Washington Post can skip arbitration with Felicia Sonmez, after the reporter was fired a year ago for relentlessly tweeting criticism of the paper’s leadership. The judge’s decision was based on the fact that the old collective bargaining agreement, which had an arbitration provision, had expired. It’s rare to see workers vying for arbitration instead of litigating in open court, but in this case, Sonmez’s initial claim to job security is rooted under the same ol’ C.B.A and it’s not clear whether she has any viable grievance to air at the National Labor Relations Board. Nevertheless, the News Guild may go the N.L.R.B. route now that the agency is more aggressively sticking up for employees attempting to improve work conditions.
  
• The Apes Swinging High: Just as Barbie and Oppenheimer were delivering a blowout box office weekend, a Delaware vice chancellor released her own summer stunner concerning AMC. Late Friday, Morgan Zurn rejected the movie theater chain’s $100 million settlement over its stock issuance plan, a mammoth victory for retail investor “apes” who saved the company nearly two years ago, only to find their stakes potentially diluted.

  These investors besieged the court with pleas (more than 3,500, according to the judge’s count), and a few spoke passionately at a hearing about being cheated by AMC C.E.O. Adam Aron. Amazingly, they managed to best some of Delaware’s finest lawyers, convincing Zurn that the settlement included an overly expansive release that purported to forfeit stockholders’ legal claims arising out of preferred interests. On Sunday night, Aron wrote an open letter to shareholders, indicating a revised settlement was coming—possibly a last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy. Read the entire ruling here.

• The A.I.-Artist Scoreboard: Perhaps unsurprisingly, artists have stumbled out of the gate in their first copyright lawsuit over generative artificial intelligence. U.S. District Court judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco indicated this past week that he would dismiss most claims against Stability A.I., Midjourney, and DeviantArt, after rejecting the idea that the pastiche digital renderings were substantially similar to plaintiffs’ own work. As someone who has witnessed Hollywood studios routinely beat down cases involving allegedly-pilfered movie and TV scripts, I know how hard it can be to prove copyright infringement. But still, my gut tells me the greatest battle is still on the horizon, and it will likely focus on the “training” of A.I. systems and the legality of scraping online sites.
• What else I’m reading: A grievance against NBCUniversal for obstructing the sidewalk outside its lot during the writers’ strike… FTX’s bid to claw back a billion dollars from Sam Bankman-Fried… A new countersuit in that wild case over the Bulgari family fortune… The effort by local TV stations to revive a nearly decade-old F.C.C. proceeding concerning its jurisdiction to police streaming… The differences between owning public stock in the Atlanta Braves (a complicated Liberty Media spin-off) and the Green Bay Packers… The New Yorker profile of Alex Spiro… and the news Taylor Swift fans have been eagerly awaiting: new D.O.J./F.T.C. draft merger guidelines.

Theroux, the magnetic star of HBO’s The Leftovers and, more recently, White House Plumbers, holds residence on the second floor of a 10-unit building right off of Washington Square Park, while Resnicow, a partner at Fox Horan & Camerini, lives on the first floor. What started as a seemingly trivial quarrel over soundproofing has escalated into an eight-year odyssey of fiery lawsuits, with neither party yielding an inch, and one side going so far as to suggest that these cases may serve as evidence of America’s slide into totalitarianism.

At present, Theroux appears to have the upper hand, as he awaits a judge’s decision regarding whether his downstairs neighbor is a trespassing nuisance who has wielded his legal prowess to bully and torment those around him. In fact, the actor has already convinced the building’s other residents to vote to terminate Resnicow’s occupancy agreement and expel him from their midst. But the wily lawyer, nearing retirement at the age of 76, is not going gently into that good night. Resnicow is now endeavoring to dissolve the co-op, a particularly pernicious move from someone who was honored by the state bar for his professionalism. Ironically, the administration of that award coincided with the eruption of the hostilities.

Seizing upon the incident, and after consulting with his architect wife, Resnicow suggested that Theroux soundproof his apartment. This marked the first time that Resnicow had ever complained about noise, which apparently struck Theroux as peculiar. The actor later testified, “I have always believed, and still do, that the real motivation behind Resnicow’s soundproofing demand was his desire to finally conceal within his apartment his abusive outbursts directed at his spouse, which I had been reporting for years.”

Theroux declined to soundproof, citing the demand as unreasonable and fearing the installation might compromise his apartment’s ceiling height or damage his antique hardwood floors. The rejection led Resnicow to resort to lawyerly tactics. He sought leverage by telling Theroux’s contractor that he could no longer come so early each morning, and insisting that Theroux obey obscure building rules revolving around carpeting and water access.

Adding to the drama, Resnicow placed bricks across the roof terrace, and claimed that a fresh review of the proper boundary line entitled him to an extra 40 square feet of deck space. He then offered to return the space to Theroux for $40,000, which the actor perceived as extortion, while Resnicow dubbed it a “conciliatory” gesture. Again, Theroux rejected the supposed olive branch, calling it “tantamount to chopping off someone’s limb and then offering the victim the privilege of buying it back,” and the battle over a few square feet wound its way to the co-op’s board. Theroux’s plan to rebuild his outdoor deck and enjoy backyard sunshine was officially on pause.

As the dispute eventually escalated to include the balcony and stairs, too, Theroux hinted at taking the entire matter to court. In response, Resnicow issued a warning, referring to the actor’s status as a “public figure” and cautioning that a legal showdown would not only embarrass Theroux’s then-wife Jennifer Aniston and consume his publicist, it would be “a grossly foolish strategic blunder that would blow up in his face along the lines of Oscar Wilde’s famous lawsuit.”

Theroux responded incredulously: “What a lunatic. My publicist? Public humiliation? Oscar Wilde? Is he calling me a sodomite?”

And thus, the lawsuit began, with the attendant news stories painting Resnicow as the neighbor from hell. Seeking to counter this portrayal, Resnicow offered exclusives to tabloids, eventually granting an interview and tour to the Daily Mail, leading to the headline, Here’s Justin’s Junk. Theroux was infuriated by this invasion of privacy—and the building’s other residents were none too pleased with having a tabloid informant in their midst. The co-op board quickly passed a rule that required prior written consent before filming private areas of the building.

Of course, the drama didn’t end there. Among other sordid details in the suit, Theroux apparently repeatedly photographed Resnicow trespassing on his property, tape measure in hand, while Resnicow countered by accusing the actor of being the voyeur, claiming Theroux would stand on the balcony with a camera and exclaim “easy” like Clint Eastwood. As the two sides prepared for an all-important summary judgment hearing last autumn, Resnicow asked in court papers, “Who is stalking whom?”

It’s hard to imagine the courtroom not erupting in cackles. To his credit, Theroux’s Pryor Cashman attorney, Eric Sherman, cooly responded, “Your Honor, by Mr. Levine’s account, Mr. Resnicow can do anything he wants on his property. He could hold up a mail bomb and stare through Justin’s window all day long. He could put on a clown costume and hold a weapon from his property and stare at Justin all day long. As long as it’s on his property, he can pretty much do anything to anybody and not be held accountable for nuisance. But that’s not the way the law works.”

Maybe so, but thanks to dueling senses of entitlement and a silly spate of events, we’re now faced with a case in which one party is claiming a First Amendment right to call TMZ amid a feud with a famous neighbor. It’s so ludicrous that it almost seems inevitable. Now, Justice Gerald Lebovits must wrestle with the thin line between poor behavior and unlawful conduct inside a Greenwich Village co-op.

But even without the troubling indication of domestic abuse, Resnicow’s neighbors had their own stories of being bullied and threatened by him. In their view, Resnicow had “destroyed the community of the building,” and expressing a wish to “bring peace,” moved to evict him.

In New York City, however, the law makes it terribly difficult to oust someone from their home. So Resnicow is still there, apparently shouting the occasional obscenity in the lobby. Just a few weeks ago, the co-op pushed a New York judge to reject the lawyer’s remaining defenses to the lease termination, and ignore Resnicow’s contention that he was the victim of a conspiracy to force him to sell his apartment at a distressed price.

As a determination looms, the co-op board successfully got a different judge on Friday to dismiss Resnicow’s bid to dissolve the building’s status as an active corporation. Of course, an appeal seems likely in this ceaseless feud. Nobody gives up a Greenwich Village apartment easily. Especially when the gorgeous views are so famous.