Tyler Perry stepped onto the sidewalk outside Marshall's federal courthouse a few minutes after noon Tuesday to be greeted by a small group of female fans, who rushed toward him seeking autographs.
One petite woman grew so bold as to throw her arms around the playwright, actor and film director and he good-naturedly returned her embrace, his massive frame dwarfing his admirer.
COURTNEY CASE/NEWS MESSENGER |
Actor Tyler Perry answers questions for fans and reporters as he goes to lunch after morning testimony in a copyright infringement case involving the actor Tuesday at the Sam B. Hall Jr. Federal Court Building in downtown Marshall.
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"Marshall is just great," Perry told television cameramen.
"We love you, Tyler," one of the group shouted and a chant of "Ty-ler, Ty-ler, Ty-ler, Ty-ler" went up from the group as Perry stepped into the passenger side of a black SUV that whisked him away for a lunch break.
The Atlanta, Ga., resident returned to U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas at 1 p.m. to face allegations that he stole copyrighted material from Donna West for the film, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."
Perry plays "Madea" in the box office hit released in 2005.
The copyright infringement trial against Perry began 9 a.m. Tuesday with U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis of Tyler presiding.
Testimony resumes 9 a.m. today before a four-man, four-woman jury. The case will continue Thursday and resume Monday, Dec. 8. Judge Davis told jurors he anticipates it will be completed by next Tuesday.
By 8:15 a.m. Tuesday, Perry was in the basement courtroom ordinarily assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Chad Everingham with his attorneys, their staff and box after box of documents.
With the addition of the same for Ms. West, the tiny room was packed to capacity, with an extra individual squeezed into some of the four benches in the gallery, made to accommodate comfortably only four people each.
With the afternoon session, the trial moved to the first floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge T. John Ward.
Davis had explained to jurors that the larger courtroom was not available for the morning session.
When Davis called the lunch recess, Ms. West was on the stand, being cross-examined by Perry's attorney, Veronica Lewis.
Answering questions from her attorney, Aubrey "Nick" Pittman of Dallas, Ms. West said she was asking the jury to award to her family all the profits made from the film. Her husband, Doug West, was in the courtroom.
"I can't put my play on," Ms. West said, "because the stories are basically the same and nobody wants to see that again."
Ms. West said she developed a script entitled "Fantasy of a Black Woman" based primarily on her own experiences.
With Ms. West in the starring role, the play was performed July 19, 20, and 21 of 1991 at the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters at the Dallas Convention Center.
In her opening remarks to the jury, Perry's attorney called her client an "immensely talented" individual "who has no need whatsoever" to use the materials of others.
"Mr. Perry has never met Donna West, he never had access to a copy of, or a description of her play," Ms. Lewis said.
"Her allegations are based on speculation and fantasies that have been concocted because this one knew this one and that one knew that one, so something must have happened."
Ms. Lewis noted Perry had experienced considerable success before and after the film, "so why would he need to copy Ms. West's script?"
In his opening remarks, Ms. West's attorney said: "'Fantasy of a Black Woman' and 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman' are both works of fiction. What is true," Pittman added, "is that Mr. Perry and Lions Gate Entertainment Inc. (the film's producer) took the work of Ms. West and made it into an $80 million movie which was released around the world.
"They took away her dream of sharing her story with the world."
Pittman described his client as a "mother of three and grandmother of three," who married Doug West in 1996.
Pittman said Ms. West was not claiming she owned a copyright on the "stock" characters of a philandering husband or an abused wife. What she was claiming, he said, was that certain expressions she had used in her play also appeared in the film.
Giving the jury a "time-line" of his client's life, Pittman said "before she married Doug, she was married to a man who wasn't very nice. In 1990, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she started to think about her life.
"She decided to write about a husband who abused her physically and cheated on her with other women and then she decided she wanted to perform it so other people could see it."
Ms. West "lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area" and she contracted with Curtis King \— founder in 1977 of the Black Academy and its current president \— to perform her play.
Pittman said Ms. West gave King a copy of the manuscript, which he never returned. The stage manager at the theater was also given a copy, which was not given back.
"King is a writer," who is sponsored by Arthur Primas, Pittman said, and Primas "brought Perry to Dallas in 1998 when (the actor) was struggling and broke.
"Perry spent 40 hours a week at the academy," Pittman said, intimating the defendant could have obtained a copy of Ms. West's work during that time.
"There was a partnership between Perry and Primas," Pittman continued. "He had to loan money to Mr. Perry" before the making of the film.
Pittman claimed Perry paid Primas $5.4 million of the proceeds from the film "and he (Primas) got more off the play" Perry wrote by the same name.
Pittman contended Perry copied the concept of a woman being abandoned by her husband close to their wedding anniversary and also of the husband becoming paralyzed temporarily after he left his wife.
"His story is just like hers," Pittman said. "How else could a man of 28 come up with something on his own that a woman 13 years older than him went through in her own life?"
In her testimony, Ms. West said she had never heard of Perry and knew nothing of the movie until her daughter saw the DVD in 2006 and brought it to her attention.
Ms. West said she then watched the movie nine times before she decided to ask the opinion of a university theater professor, who agreed with her that the material in the film was identical to that in her play.
The professor will be called as an expert witness for the defense.
In his opening remarks, however, Louis Petrich of Leopold, Petrich & Smith, attorneys for Lions Gate, said the theater professor has never before testified as an expert witness.
"She hasn't done her homework," he said of the witness. "On the other hand, we expect to call as our expert Bob Gale, the professional screenwriter for 'Back to the Future.'"
The defense hammered away at the fact that Ms. West never again performed her work, but the plaintiff said much of her time was spent in hospitals due to poor health.
In addition to the brain tumor, Ms. West has also suffered with congestive heart failure and has been hospitalized approximately 30 times for kidney problems, she testified.
She said she has been in "the entertainment business" since 1972, has written two other books, nine plays and has written songs for others and herself.
"I've been a singer basically all my life," she said, noting she has toured with a number of gospel-singing groups.
