By Dave Simpson

Law360, New York (March 24, 2021, 10:51 PM EDT) -- A New York state judge signed off on a joint bid to delay until April 2022 an in-person trial in a multimillion-dollar suit against AMC from the fired creator of "The Walking Dead," after the network warned of the potentially deadly toll COVID-19 could exact on participants' families if they try the case next month.

New York County Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen on Tuesday agreed to a joint proposal to push the trial, which was scheduled to start April 26, to April 4, 2022. Producer Frank Darabont's suit accuses AMC Networks Inc. of shorting him more than $280 million in profits.

"If a window for a five-week jury trial becomes available on the court's calendar before April 4, 2022, and assuming the court deems the pandemic conditions allow a trial to be conducted safely at that time, the parties will use their best efforts to make themselves available for a joint trial," the order, signed by Cohen, said.

In a contentious remote conference earlier this month, AMC surprised Darabont with a doomsaying motion to delay their in-person jury trial. AMC counsel employed dramatic imagery of vaccinated "silent carriers," superspreader jurors "like a rapid fire machine gun" in the courtroom, and elderly "scared witnesses" being forced to fly in from California amid a state-mandated two-week quarantine.

"We think the right thing to do on this drop-dead date is to declare that the trial will not proceed," AMC counsel Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP said, pointing to federal health guidelines and medical news reports and arguing that "there will be mass transmission of COVID" in New York City at the current trial start date.

"There will be new variants, there will be deaths. Going to court on April 26 will be Russian roulette," Snyder said. "All you need is one superspreader and our entire trial has COVID."

AMC's motion to delay the trial featured both evidence of a medical necessity to delay and a constitutional argument that any jury seated at the time of the trial would be "skewed."

Blank Rome LLP's Jerry D. Bernstein, counsel for Darabont, slammed Snyder's motion to delay trial, saying their side was being "sandbagged" with no warning that such a motion was coming weeks before voir dire.

Ultimately, the parties came to a joint agreement to delay the trial, which Justice Cohen signed off on.

Darabont's legal battle against AMC began after he developed "The Walking Dead" in its initial years and served as its executive producer from 2010 to 2011. In 2013, Darabont, Ferenc Inc., Darkwoods Productions Inc. and his talent agency, Creative Artists Agency LLC, accused the network and its affiliates of using shady accounting practices to drive down Darabont's cut of revenues from the popular zombie apocalypse television show.

Darabont claims AMC Studios licensed the series for broadcast to its corporate affiliate, AMC Network, using an artificially low license fee that drove down his share in breach of their contracts and cheated him out of more than $280 million.

Darabont and the other plaintiffs are represented by Jerry D. Bernstein and Nicholas R. Tambone of Blank Rome LLP, and Dale F. Kinsella, Chad R. Fitzgerald and Aaron C. Liskin of Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump LLP.

AMC and the other defendants are represented by Orin Snyder, Brian C. Ascher, Lee R. Crain, Scott A. Edelman and Ilissa Samplin of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The case is Frank Darabont et al. v. AMC Network Entertainment LLC et al., case number 650251/2018, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York.

--Additional reporting by Dorothy Atkins and Frank G. Runyeon. Editing by Breda Lund.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that the order delaying the trial came at the joint request of the parties.

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