In an ongoing copyright dispute between Bart Steele and seemingly everyone involved with Major League Baseball and Red Sox marketing (including Bon Jovi), Steele has filed four cases (three of them in federal court) alleging that the defendants infringed his rights to a song he wrote about the Red Sox and used it in a promo aired on TBS.
The Court held that this most recent case was barred by res judicata as duplicative of the first case, which Judge Gorton disposed of on summary judgment (a ruling on appeal to the First Circuit). Accordingly, all claims in this case were dismissed. A motion for sanctions was granted to deter Steele’s repeated filings, but the sanction was limited to an admonition to Steele that any future frivolous or vexatious cases will result in future sanctions including an order enjoining future filings as well as an award of costs and fees.
Steele v. Ricigliano, 10-11458-NMG (D. Mass. May 18, 2011)
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