Monique Pressley, the lawyer who rose to fame in defending Bill Cosby, has two new clients.
Pressley is reportedly representing Larry S. Johnson and Blake Keller, the writing and editing duo who are suing 50 Cent and the executive producers of “Power” over copyright infringement and breach of contract.
According to their complaint, Johnson wrote a script that Keller edited, and the work that they produced was then stolen by the “Power” producers.
“Mr. Johnson first sued the Defendants in Virginia in 2015 without counsel, and now will continue the fight through this action seeking to put an immediate stop to, and to obtain redress for, Defendants’ blatant, purposeful and massive infringement of the copyright in Mr. Johnson’s two-part manuscript entitled ‘Tribulations of a Ghetto Kid’, edited by Mr. Keller. As he does with all of his works, Mr. Johnson wrote this protected work over 12 years ago under his pen name ‘The Ghost’. Both Mr. Johnson’s work and Power TV Show share basic elements such as the exploration of the life of an African-American protagonist drug dealer using his ill-gotten gains to transition into the realm of legitimate business,” said Johnson’s team in a statement.
The statement continues, “However, even beyond the basic elements, and the glaring likeness of the main character, Power TV show infringes so far as to borrow character names, plot lines, and nearly identical language from Mr. Johnson’s protected work, making one strikingly similar to the other.”
“Defendants have brazenly and improperly exploited Mr. Johnson’s manuscript without authorization in order to further their own gain.”