The times are hard on everyone’s pocketbooks, but one company in particular is tired of paying for products it never received, and it wants a refund. Publishing house Penguin Group filed a complaint with the New York State Supreme Court, seeking to recoup the advances it paid to authors who failed to hold up their end of the deal and deliver a book, and accusing them of breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
Included in the suit are Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of “Prozac Nation,” who never delivered a promised book to help teenagers deal with depression and Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The New Yorker, who was supposed to put together a collection of her journalism.
Also facing the loss of his advance is Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor who went on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show with a fabricated tale of romance. Penguin gave him a $30,000 advance to write a memoir about the girl who helped keep him alive in a concentration camp who he later met again on a blind date, though Rosenblat later admitted fictionalizing parts of his story.
Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.
For more book-related lawsuits covered on InsideCounsel, see below:
Apple and e-book publishers offer proposed settlement with EU
Chinese writers win copyright battle against search engine Baidu
Penguin faces age-discrimination suit
