Dragonlance Dragonlance Lawsuit Dismissed Without Prejudice

The recent lawsuit brought against D&D publishers Wizards of the Coast by Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman has been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.

When a lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice, it means that the plaintiff cannot bring the issue back to court. When -- as in this case -- it is dismissed without prejudice, the plaintiff can try again.

In this case it was voluntarily dismissed by Weis & Hickman. We can only guess why; perhaps a settlement occurred? In any case, Margaret Weis tweeted, thanking people for their support, and hinting at exciting news to come.

"Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff Margaret Weis, LLC and Tracy Hickman hereby gives notice that the above-captioned action is voluntarily dismissed as to Wizards of the Coast LLC, without prejudice. Defendant Wizards of the Coast LLC has not filed an answer or motion for summary judgment, no proceedings or discovery have been undertaken as to these claims, and this action is not subject to any federal statute which would preclude the dismissal of this action under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i)."

 

[Echohawk]

Check the date of print, if it's included on the book page. If the book wasn't printed in the past 10 years, then it's entirely reasonable to say that the books are 'out of print', as the last printing is still being sold in the market and thus there's no reason to issue a new print run.

Excluding eBook, audio book and foreign language versions (of which there have been many in the last decade), it looks like the last English language print run of Dragons of Autumn Twilight was in 2012, when the hardcover version (originally from 2003) seems to have been reprinted.

 

[Ibrandul]

Check the date of print, if it's included on the book page. If the book wasn't printed in the past 10 years, then it's entirely reasonable to say that the books are 'out of print', as the last printing is still being sold in the market and thus there's no reason to issue a new print run.

'Out of print' doesn't mean the book isn't available for purchase, just that the publisher isn't planning to print any more. Contrast the adventures 'Horde of the Dragon Queen' and 'Rise of Tiamat', which were reprinted in a single-bound edition containing both adventures, to 'Curse of Strahd', which has been recently reprinted in a special edition, to 'Out of the Abyss', which hasn't had either treatment. Out of the Abyss can reasonably be described as 'out of print', unless someone is aware of a plan to reprint it.

--
Pauper

Out of the Abyss is still selling and still being kept in print with reprints, just like all the WotC 5e hardcovers to date—even, unless something has changed quite recently, HotDQ and RoT. No WotC 5e hardcover is out of print.

 

[embee]

Their DL books alone have sold over 25 million, and they’ve written dozens of other books over the years.

Comparing them to the fantastically successful Nora Roberts, and her over 200 novels, is also a bit strange.

I did that to put their prayer for damages in perspective.

They claimed $10 million in advance payments and royalties. This is a red flag already. You don't get royalties until you've earned back your advance. That aside, I cited Nora Roberts to illustrate how many books they would need to sell to generate the kind of royalties claimed.

As stated, Nora Roberts gets $10 million PER YEAR in royalty payments from about 15 million books sold PER YEAR. So, to get $10 million in royalties, they'd likely need to sell about 15 million books. Naturally, their number of books needed to generate those kind of royalty payments is most likely higher because they are not Nora Roberts and, not being likely to sell the volume of books that she sells, would not be able to secure terms as favorable as Ms. Roberts is able to secure.

They were suing over, optimistically, a trilogy of books. Three books. Only one of which was actually written.

Their entire bibliography stretching back decades amounts to, using your figure, 25 million books sold. That is on, according to your terms, dozens of other books in addition to Dragonlance.

This was not an overly viable lawsuit.

The Complaint had three causes of action: (1) Breach of Contract; (2) Breach of Implied Duty of Fair Dealing [a type of breach of contract claim], and; (3) Tortious Interference With Contract.

The third one was just bootstrapping to try to keep the claim for $10 million from being disallowed as a matter of law.

Under a claim for breach of contract, a party may recover actual damages and consequential damages that are reasonably foreseeable. However, consequential damages that are speculative in nature are non-recoverable as a matter of law.

The first two claims were only seeking specific performance - approval so the book(s) could be published. The third one is the one that sought the $10 million. It was couched as a tort claim to try to get around being dismissed outright as speculative. And, even if it survived a motion to dismiss on that ground, a denial of a motion to dismiss does not mean victory. It means not loss. It means a chance to prove the damages.

Which would require expert witnesses. Which would require the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars to prove those damages.

So, why did I bring up Nora Roberts?

Because Hasbro's attorneys would do so in order to establish a baseline for the level of author who sells enough books to generate $10 million in royalties.

 

[wicked cool]

Pine as Sturm? draconians as bad guys on screen would be epic! Dragon riders plus the hunt for the lance etc .heck ill take more miniatures and a supplement. bring back a skirmish/wargame version of it. The dragons had personality! Toede is the most memorable hobgoblin!

I cant understand why there is nothing out there on the movie at all, why the lawsuit was dropped/why they needed it in the first place. its less than 2 years away (horrible marketing)

 

[Hutchimus Prime]

 

[wicked cool]

hmm sony pictures shirt?
dice on the table? modules?

 

[Mistwell]

hmm sony pictures shirt?
dice on the table? modules?

And a Harry Potter Chocolate Frog container.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Didn't work well for Dragonlance at all. S'why most people say they ignore the later stuff

... Has advancing the timeline worked for any RPG product? I know we were all metaplot crazy in the 90s, but I figured most people were just upset and annoyed with it by the end

Yes ... and no.

Eberron has from memory advanced slightly with each edition change. But it's advanced while at the same time keeping the core themes of being in a tense peace a few years since the Last War, Cyre got nuked, and no one knows all the schemes going on but the war may break out.

The Forgotten Realms transitions (such as the Avatar Trilogy) have all been terrible - but only 4e made the daft decision to redesign rather than tweak the setting. Almost everything that worked in 2e worked in 3.X and the new Goddess of magic even took the same name as the old one. (The 4e setting was redefined to those of us who don't like the Realms - but we were busy using other settings more to our taste anyway so didn't much care while those who liked them very reasonably objected).

 

[Ibrandul]

Given the quite cheeky pic Hickman just tweeted out, it seems pretty likely that Manganiello and Sony had a hand in facilitating whatever deal has been struck. This doesn't look to me like a "here's some cash. Go away" settlement (which is what I for one would have expected), but rather a "sorry! Let's keep working together" settlement.

As for the question of the large damages sought, nobody ever asks for less in relief than the maximum amount they plausibly could have made had the project turned out to become extremely successful. At any rate, the nice round $10 million figure was probably selected more for its news value, as this suit was never likely to reach trial and was designed to coerce WotC into some kind of settlement by drumming up bad publicity, at which it appears to have been pretty successful. If you're a subsidiary of the company that makes My Little Pony, "pedophilia" is not a word you want appearing in any news stories about you under any circumstances whatsoever.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Sony in the shirt? It can't be casual. Does this mean a Sony picture based in a Hitman's novel?