In the lawsuit between the producers and the star of ABC's The Bachelor 4, which we reported here Monday, Bob Guiney received an early Christmas present.
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Producers And Syndicated Productions, Inc., a division of Telepictures Productions, sued Bob, the show's title bachelor, and Wind-up Records seeking both damages from Bob's "unauthorized" marketing of his Wind-up CD 3 Sides and an injunction to prevent Bob from doing any further promotion of it during his "exclusivity" period with the show. On December 24, a U.S. District Court judge in California rejected the request for the immediate injunction.
While the ruling does not end the lawsuit, it does mean that ASP failed to meet the two-pronged standard for an injunction: (1) it is likely to prevail in the full trial, and (2) monetary damages will not be sufficient to make it whole if it ultimately does prevail.
Since it seems very unlikely that any cross-promotional activity that Bob was engaged in, other than pornography or something that debased the image of The Bachelor, could produce such harm to ASP that money damages would be inadequate, the ruling may tell us very little about the merits of the underlying case. Nevertheless, Bob's lawyer, Charles Harder of the Lavely & Singer firm in Los Angeles, predicted that this was just the first in a string of legal victories for Bob. "This is a case that never should have been brought," he said. "Bob Guiney has the right to continue his 12-year career as a recording artist. It is outrageous that Telepictures, a multi-billion dollar entertainment company, would try to stop him from earning a living."
Whether Bob can earn a living from his recording career remains unknown, since 3 Sides and its single "Girlfriend" have both struggled in the charts since release. Part of the struggle, though, may have to do with the chilling effect that this dispute has had on the 3 Sides publicity campaign during the competitive Christmas shopping season. In an effort to point out that Bob hasn't just made a "vanity record," Wind-up states that, counting Bob's records with Fat Amy, this is Bob's fourth album -- although, as we reported previously, we are only aware of two prior Fat Amy CDs, released in 1995 and 1997. (We would love to be enlightened about the fourth CD.)
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Nevertheless, since Bob's relationship with his selected partner, Estella Gardinier, seems to have reached the end, its appears he's not going to be collecting anything similar to the $1 million dowry that Bachelorette Trista Rehn picked up for marrying her choice Ryan Sutter (while rejecting Bob), so he does need to make a living. And, at least he hasn't been engaging in childish public spats with a perceived rival, as 16-year-old star singer-actress Hilary Duff (with whom Bob appeared on some dates during his post-show publicity tour) foolishly did last week. Thus, we're glad that Round 1 is over and was scored in Bob's favor. We'll look forward to Round 2 after the holidays.