Sander/Moses Productions, Inc. v. NBC Studios, Inc.

I. INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff and appellant Sander/Moses Productions, Inc. (Sander/Moses) contracted with NBC Studios, Inc. (NBC Studios) to provide executive production services for the television series entitled Profiler, which the NBC television network broadcast between 1996 and 2000. Sander/Moses provided those services for two years and was paid the fixed compensation to which it was entitled under the agreement. A dispute arose over Sander/Moses’s entitlement to contingent compensation under the agreement. Sander/Moses sued, alleging that NBC Studios wrongly applied a contract limitation provision to calculate the contingent compensation owed Sander/Moses under the agreement. The trial court granted NBC Studios’s motion for summary adjudication as to the breach of fiduciary duty cause of action and its motion for judgment on the pleadings as to the cause of action for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. A jury subsequently returned a verdict in favor of NBC Studios on the remaining causes of action.

Sander/Moses appeals the judgment entered after the verdict on various grounds. In the published portion of the opinion, we discuss…