Everybody gets a lawsuit! Everybody gets a lawsuit! Everybody with a bone to pick with Oprah Winfrey, that is.
Attorneys for the queen of daytime are fending off two separate lawsuits this week, one filed by an audience member at The Oprah Winfrey Show who claims she was injured when the excitable audience stampeded for choice seats during a taping, and another from a Boston mother who claims she fed Harpo Studios the idea for Winfrey's ratings-grabbing stab at televised altruism, Oprah's Big Give, and has yet to receive credit or compensation.
The first of the suits, filed in Chicago's Cook County Circuit Court, sees onetime audience member Orit Greenberg seeking more than $50,000 in medical fees and other damages from Harpo, claiming that while attending a taping of the chatfest on Dec. 5, 2006, she suffered "severe and permanent injuries."
The damage was done, Greenberg claimed, when studio reps told audience members congregated in a waiting room that they could choose their own seats once inside the studio. In the ensuing mad dash to score front-row placement, an "excess number of patrons...rushed the gate," and Greenberg was subsequently pushed down a flight of stairs.
The suit blames Harpo for the incident, saying the company failed to exercise adequate crowd control measures and was similarly careless in allowing the rabid pack of housewives to battle it out for prime Winfrey-watching seats.
A Harpo rep told E! News on Friday that the company does not comment on pending litigation.
As for the action against Oprah's Big Give, Boston mother-of-four Darlene Tracy alleges that producers of the Sunday night feel-good show stole the idea from a proposal she sent the company back in February 2005.
Tracy claims she pitched a reality show called The Philanthropist to Ellen Rakieten and Jennifer Thornton, the executive producer and a producer of Winfrey's daytime talk show, in which contestants were judged on their ability to help out those less fortunate.
Tracy claims Rakieten responded to her proposal and requested more information on the would-be series, which she promptly delivered. Four months later, Tracy says, Thornton broke the news that Harpo would be passing on the show.
Just over a year later, however, in November 2006, Winfrey announced on her show plans for a series similar—too similar, for Tracy—in concept to her original idea.
Tracy filed a complaint in Boston's U.S. District Court to prevent the Big Give from airing, though a judge quickly dismissed the filing after Winfrey's lawyers argued that Massachusetts wasn't the place to embark on the legal battle.
Armed with a new team of lawyers—as opposed to her previous self-representation—Tracy has filed an appeal, which includes documentation of her correspondence with the Oprah Winfrey Show producers.
Apparently breaking Harpo's "no comment" policy on pending litigation, a spokesperson for the studio told the New York Daily News Wednesday that "we agree with the judge that [Tracy's claims]...are without merit."
The rep went on to say that Winfrey's team was "confident that the Court of Appeals will agree that Tracy has no claim."
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