Simpson and Goldman Fitted for Same Suit

Tue., Nov. 6, 2007 9:34 PM PST by Natalie Finn

If a certain very hot place hasn't frozen over, then what are O.J. Simpson and Fred Goldman doing on the same side?

The frequent legal opponents were both sued Tuesday for copyright infringement by a Los Angeles writer who claims that the brain trust behind If I Did It, which contains graphic descriptions about how Simpson would have gone about killing his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman, ripped off his 1995 tome Perfect Alibi: O.J. Simpson's Strategy for Murder.

The plaintiff has 'em on timeliness, at least.

Amir Pourtemour is claiming that Simpson, Goldman and several others pilfered his take on the case, which is that Simpson is guilty of the double murder and that it was the Los Angeles Police Department, not the former football star, that was the victim of a frame-up.

(Simpson's defense "dream team" did its darndest to convince jurors that LAPD detectives were guilty of planting evidence and otherwise framing the Naked Gun actor.)

Also named in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in L.A. were ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves, who Simpson says did most of the work; entertainment gossip site TMZ.com, which posted excerpts from the book; and publisher Beaufort Books, which wasn't immediately available for comment.

Goldman, who had nothing to do with the book's inception, won the rights to If I Did It as part of his ongoing quest to collect on the $33.5 million wrongful-death judgment his family was awarded in 1997. After ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins (which is in turn owned by News Corp.) dropped the project in the face of mass public outrage, the Goldmans went after the rights and chose to repackage the book as a confession.

Chapters six and seven of If I Did It, which describe the murders and feature a transcript of Simpson's interview with police investigators following the white Bronco affair, contain "the same premises and conclusions" as Perfect Alibi, Pourtemour's lawsuit states. He also notes that both books contain the exact same transcript with the exact same typographical error.

However, that typographical error, just like the transcript it comes from, is in all likelihood part of the public record assuming it was filed into evidence, and therefore not a copyrighted document. (And Pourtemour might want to consider a class-action suit against quite a few others if he's worried about people glomming onto his theory of the case.)

Either way, Pourtemour is seeking unspecified damages and attorneys' fees, as well as an injunction preventing further sales of If I Did It, which became a bestseller this summer despite all those prior expressions of dismay from multiple corners.

But while Simpson was acquitted of murder in 1995, he's once again facing life in prison if he's convicted of masterminding a sports memorabilia heist that allegedly went down Sept. 13 in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Simpson was originally charged along with five other men with armed robbery, burglary, assault, kidnapping and coercion, but three of his accused accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges and testify against him.

A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday.