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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

You Plant Ice, You're Gonna Harvest Wind

In a delicious turn of events, the family of O.J. Simpson murder victim Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to the Juice’s cancelled book, "If I Did It," from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee.
The family has said it will rename the book “The Confessions of a Double Murderer” and shop it around. It also acquired the media and movie rights and Simpson’s name, likeness, life story and rights of publicity in connection with the book.
Goldman was slain along with Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994. The former football star, actor and ad pitchman has maintained his innocence.

He was acquitted of murder, but Goldman's family won a civil wrongful death case against him now totaling more than $33 million.

When publisher Judith Regan announced in November that she was publishing “If I Did It,” promoted as a book on how Simpson "might" have murdered Nicole and Goldman, the outcry was enormous.

Regan, so appallingly deaf to the marketplace, was soon given her walking papers by none other than Rupert Murdoch, whose vast media empire included ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. But in a strange turn of events, the book was not dead because of the bankruptcy action against Simpson.

The conniving Simpson’s original deal with HarperCollins stipulated that in May the rights to the book would revert to Lorraine Brooke, which the Goldmans’ lawyer called a shell corporation set up to hide the proceeds. If the rights had reverted to Lorraine Brooke, Simpson could have potentially sold them to another publisher, an action the Goldman family has now prevented.
More here.

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