A. A. Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc.

A. A. Hoehling (the plaintiff) published a book about the Hindenburg accident. The book, a factual narrative, opined that the cause of the Hindenburg’s explosion was due to saboteur named Eric Spehl. To come to this conclusion, the plaintiff read several contemporaneous accounts of the accident, interviewed several survivors of the explosion, and reasoned that, based on his access to the area where the explosion began as well as his love interest with an anti-Nazi communist, that Spehl in fact caused the explosion. A decade later, Universal City Studios, Inc. (the defendant) obtained the movie rights to a novel which included a subplot in which a fictional representation of Spehl planned the explosions for the same reasons mentioned in the plaintiff’s book. The defendant later developed the movie rights into a screenplay and changed Spehl’s name to Boeth, but otherwise kept the same similar subplot in the movie. Subsequently, the plaintiff filed a copyright-infringement suit against the defendants. The district court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and the plaintiff appealed.