O'Donnell, Pierce 1947–

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O'Donnell, Pierce 1947–

PERSONAL: Born 1947, in Averill Park, NY; son of a liquor store owner and a librarian; married; wife's name Dawn; children: five. Education: Georgetown University, J.D.; Yale University, J.D.

ADDRESSES: Home—Montecito, CA. Office—O'Donnell Shaeffer Mortimer, LLP, 550 S. Hope St., Ste. 2000, Los Angeles, CA 90071.

CAREER: Clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White and for Ninth Circuit Court Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler; worked in a law firm in Los Angeles, CA; ran unsuccessfully as Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress, 1980; O'Donnell & Gordon (law firm), former partner, beginning 1982; O'Donnell Shaeffer Mortimer LLP (law firm), Los Angeles, CA, currently partner. Former adjunct professor for Independent Film and Television Producers Program, University of California at Los Angeles; guest lecturer at universities, including Loyola University, University of Southern California, and Pepperdine University. Consultant, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on federal criminal law reform. Fellow, International Academy of Trial Lawyers, American College of Trial Lawyers, and American Board of Trial Advocates; member, American Institute of Law; member and former president, Economic Round Table of Los Angeles.

MEMBER: PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Named among the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America," National Law Journal.

WRITINGS:

(With Michael J. Churgin and Dennis E. Curtis) Toward a Just and Effective Sentencing System: Agenda for Legislative Reform, foreword by Edward M. Kennedy, Praeger (New York, NY), 1977.

(With Dennis McDougal) Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount, Double-day (New York, NY), 1992, 2nd edition, Dove Books (West Hollywood, CA), 1996.

Dawn's Early Light (poetry), Rosebud (Chugiak, AK), 2001.

In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America, introduction by Anthony Lewis, New Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Also coauthor of screenplay Home Team. Contributor to periodicals and professional journals.

ADAPTATIONS: Fatal Subtraction was adapted to sound cassettes for Bantam Audio, 1992.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Funny You Asked about That.

SIDELIGHTS: Prominent California attorney Pierce O'Donnell has made a name for himself litigating cases involving large corporations and famous people. Among his clients have been companies such as Pfizer Inc., Miramax Films, DreamWorks SKG, Conoco Phillips, Bridgestone/Firestone, the National Broadcasting Company, Texaco, and Lockheed Martin Corp. He is best known for his work in the entertainment industry, first making a big name for himself when he represented writer Art Buchwald and agent/producer Alain Bernheim in a 1988 case against Paramount Pictures. Buchwald claimed that the movie studio had taken his and Bernheim's idea for the movie that became Coming to America, starring Eddie Murphy, and did not pay Buchwald a cent for it; also, Bernheim was denied the job of being the film's producer, as had been agreed. The case, in which the attorney portrayed Paramount as a sleazy company that manipulated accounting information to make it seem as though no profits were made on the film, made national headlines. It also became the subject of O'Donnell's book, Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount, written with journalist Dennis McDougal.

In Fatal Subtraction the authors relate that the studio promised to pay Buchwald and Bernheim a fee and percentage of profits, but when Paramount declared that the movie lost eighteen million dollars, despite having about three hundred million dollars in sales, the plaintiffs were paid nothing. O'Donnell writes that this was typical of Hollywood studio practices, which he claims are insidiously designed to deny public profits no matter how well a film does. "He cites some of the outrageous large and small expenses figured in to create a loss situation," according to Fred Hift in Video Age International. Writing in the American Business Law Journal, Jordan H. Leibman explained that the most direct legal course of action would have been for the plaintiffs to sue Eddie Murphy, who took writing credit for the film. However, O'Donnell did not want the case to potentially turn on racism, so instead the attorney turned to "contract theory" for his case.

In the end, the plaintiffs received what was considered a meager compensatory settlement of a little over a million dollars. However, they won a moral victory in airing out what had been a longstanding point of contention between writers and artists against Hollywood's big studios: shady accounting practices designed to keep money in the hands of studio executives and movie stars. Many reviewers found Fatal Subtraction to be a compelling read. For example, Douglas Gomery wrote in Cineaste that "O'Donnell and McDougal paint a vivid 'David versus Goliath' narrative." Hift concluded, "This is an extraordinary, revelatory, briskly-written expose, surely among the most unusual ever penned about the wheelers and dealers in the film industry, and how they run their house of mirrors."

After the Coming to America case, O'Donnell established a strategy as a trial lawyer that he "has followed ever since," according to Fortune writer Tim Carvell: "He paints his clients as pawns in the hands of a large, arrogant opponent." Sometimes, however, the attorney has still been on the defense of large corporations, such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). In a fight over the ability to develop films featuring the character James Bond, Sony Pictures Entertainment was planning to make its own Bond Films. MGM sued, and, with O'Donnell on the case, won. O'Donnell manages his victories through his commanding understanding of how to exploit the media. The attorney, related Carvell, "has co-opted the techniques of persuasion that the studios have spent decades honing and has turned those techniques against their creators."

O'Donnell took up another controversial topic in In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America. The book is about how, in 1942, eight German-Americans planning sabotage were caught on American soil. Though the conspirators never carried out their plan—indeed, their own leader quickly turned them in—public outrage led to a quick trial. Six of the team were executed and the other two sent to prison. The trial had heavy political overtones, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt setting up a secret military tribunal for the prisoners that established a precedent that has been used by President George W. Bush against suspected terrorists since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Known as "Ex parte Quirin," the precedent was used against the Guatanamo Bay prisoners, and O'Donnell spends much of his book refuting the government's stand that it is a constitutional practice. A Publishers Weekly contributor called In Time of War "a passionate defense of the Bill of Rights." "This book addresses an important and emotional national issue," concluded Daniel K. Blewett in Library Journal, "and if we cannot even debate it, then the Constitution is dead."

O'Donnell's interest in politics eventually put him in legal trouble, however. In February 2006, he received three years of probation, heavy fines, and a ban on political fund-raising for making illegal contributions under an assumed name in 2000 and 2001 to Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Business Law Journal, November, 1993, Jordan H. Leibman, review of Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount, pp. 535-552.

American Lawyer, August, 2005, Carlyn Kolker, review of In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America, p. 28.

Cineaste, fall, 1992, Douglas Gomery, review of Fatal Subtraction, p. 95.

Entertainment Weekly, August 28, 1992, Suzanne Ruta, review of Fatal Subtraction, p. 61.

Fortune, October 11, 1999, Tim Carvell, "Lights! Camera! Lawsuit! Hollywood Loves Courtroom Dramas. Pierce O'Donnell Knows How to Stage Them. His Target? Hollywood Itself," p. 189.

Library Journal, July 1, 2005, Daniel K. Blewett, review of In Time of War, p. 98.

Los Angeles Business Journal, February 19, 2001, "Profiles of the 50 Best-Compensated Lawyers in L.A.," p. 32.

Metropolitan News-Enterprise, February 3, 2006, "Pierce O'Donnell Fined, Banned from Fundraising after Pleading No Contest to Campaign Finance Charges," p. 1.

Mother Jones, November 13, 2005, "Radio: Bio of Attorney Pierce O'Donnell."

Publishers Weekly, June 8, 1992, review of Fatal Subtraction, p. 48; October 5, 1992, review of Fatal Subtraction, p. 29; May 23, 2005, review of In Time of War, p. 73.

Video Age International, October, 1992, Fred Hift, Fatal Subtraction—How Hollywood Really Does Business," p. 12.