Legal News

Who Blinked First? Contract Claims Likely to Get Full Airing in Sheen Case

By Ashby Jones

To be honest, Charlie Sheen first appeared to us to be a bit nutty back in 1996, when he bought up an entire section of seats beyond the left-field wall at Angel Stadium (then called Anaheim Stadium) in the hope of getting a home-run ball.*

But it took him nearly 15 years for the eccentricity to fully, uh, blossom. And it seems that the folks who sign his paychecks have had enough.

Sheen was fired from the Warner Bros. sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” on Monday after the star continued an erratic media tour that since Saturday has included live Web video shows beamed from his home. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the LAT story; here for the WaPo story.

But wait, you’re saying. You remember from your first year contracts course that one can’t just go around breaching contracts. So how does Warner Bros. plan to get away with this?

By saying that, well, Sheen was the first to breach, of course.

In a letter dated Monday to Mr. Sheen’s attorney, Warner Bros., a Time Warner Inc. unit, said the actor had committed felony offenses involving moral turpitude. The studio said in the letter that those offenses included “furnishing cocaine to others as part of the self-destructive lifestyle he has described publicly.”

The behavior, according to Warner Bros., interfered with Sheen’s ability to fulfill the terms of his contract and gave  the studio “the right to treat such as a default” on his contract.

In response, Sheen’s lawyer, Marty Singer, said “We believe those claims are totally specious, absurd.”  Singer said his client has completed his rehab and is clean, taking drug tests twice a week.

And the increasingly outspoken Sheen had something to say about it as well. Through TMZ, Sheen offered up this:

This is very good news. They continue to be in breach, like so many whales. It is a big day of gladness at the Sober Valley Lodge because now I can take all of the bazillions, never have to look at [expletive] again and I never have to put on those silly shirts for as long as this warlock exists in the terrestrial dimension.

It seems to us that it’s just a matter of days (hours? minutes?) until the lawsuit gets filed and all the allegations become even more public than they have. Click here for a very good analysis of the possible contract issues over at Hollywood, Esq.

We can’t wait.

* Just to finish the story: Sheen, who spent much of the game with Poison’s Bret Michaels, didn’t get ball. Former Angels’ hurler Chuck Finley had the line of the night, though:

“He should have bought tickets when I was pitching,” said Finley. “I could have served him up a couple. "

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).