Elephant-Rights Documentary Provokes Charge of Idea Theft

                             

The teenage animal rights activist who starred in 'How I Became an Elephant' is caught in the middle of a lawsuit.  Idea theft lawsuits are common, but it's not every day that one centers around the actions of a teenage animal rights activist and her father.

Juliette West is the 16-year-old star of How I Became an Elephant, a documentary from producers including actresses Jorga Fox (CSI) and Emily Deschanel (Bones). The film released this year tells the story of West's journey to Asia to save elephants in captivity.

Last year, Melya Kaplan, another animal rights activist, and Nancy Gershwin, a former journalist at ABC and NBC who now consults for HBO, sued Juliette's father, Lee West, and associate Michael Tobias for breaching an implied contract to work together on the project. The case continues after a ruling last week by a Los Angeles Superior judge.

In the lawsuit, Kaplan alleges that the Wests contacted him to seek assistance in animal rights advocacy mentoring, and during the process, Kaplan described an idea for a potential documentary about the story of elephants through the eyes of a young adolescent girl. Lee West is said to have volunteered her daughter, agreed to raise financing, and so Kaplan says she continued working with them in the belief that she'd be incorporated into the project.

According to the defendants' court papers, "Absolutely nowhere in the [First Amended Complaint] does it allege (or could Plaintiffs truthfully allege) that Defendant West had ever worked in the film industry; that Plaintiff Kaplan ever engaged in for-profit film ventures; or that either of them (even mistakenly) believed the other to be involved in the for-profit film business."

Read More: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/how-i-became-an-elephant-lawsuit-idea-theft-380320