O.J. Trial II: Finally, someone figures out how to make money on the Web
A court reporter in the O.J. civic trial hawks transcripts online, but the press isn't buying
BY TODD WOODY
in a town where it seems like everybody has an agent, it should come as no surprise that even the O.J. Simpson court reporter has "representation."
With television cameras banished from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki's courtroom, trial transcripts from Simpson's civil case have become a hot commodity -- the closest to TV verité an O.J. junkie is likely to get.
Now a struggle over the right to publish those transcripts on the World Wide Web is under way between court reporter Paula Dickson and two television networks.
No doubt aware of the likely demand for the much-anticipated testimony of Simpson himself, and mindful of the six-figure sales earned by court reporters selling transcripts in Simpson's 1995 criminal trial, Dickson has hired an agent and is marketing the O.J. Trial II record through the Net Court web site. For 55 cents a page and a $20 processing fee, Dickson will e-mail daily transcripts to those who punch in their credit card number at the Net Court site.
But backed by the powerful California Court Reporters Association, Dickson has invoked an obscure 1993 state law to keep those transcripts off Web sites run by CNN and Court TV. The statute states that anyone who purchases a transcript "shall not otherwise provide or sell a copy or copies to any other party or person."
A brewing First Amendment dispute over whether the media can publish the Simpson transcripts is likely to put a spotlight on what some legal observers consider to be an anachronistic, if lucrative, arrangement: Although court reporters are public employees and transcripts public records, under California law reporters own the right to sell the documents.
"We published transcripts in the Simpson criminal case and in the Menendez [brothers] case, so we all along wanted to do that again in this case," said Craig Matters, editor of Court TV's web site, the Court TV Law Center.
Dickson initially refused to sell the transcripts when she learned that the web site intended to post the documents, according to Matters. Matters said negotiations with Dickson's agent are ongoing.
Dickson did not return phone calls. Her agent, Scott Huseby, said the law does not prevent the media from quoting from the transcripts, only from competing with court reporters.
"If we just allowed the publishing of the entire transcript from the second it's received by CNN, sales to other news organizations would fall off, as they would no longer have to go to us to get that," said Huseby, president of Charlotte, N.C.-based Net Court.
Said CNN spokesman Steve Haworth: "It is our view that these transcripts provide a judicial record of the proceedings and under the First Amendment we believe that they must be freely available to the public and press, and any effort to curtail that availability or restrict it amounts to prior restraint in opposition to the First Amendment."
Before the rise of the World Wide Web, few, if any, newspapers had the money, space or a reason to publish lengthy trial transcripts. But global fascination with the Simpson case created a demand for court pleadings, transcripts and other legal minutiae. And on the Internet, it's about as cheap to publish "War and Peace" as the police blotter.
All of which apparently blindsided court reporters when transcripts from Simpson's first trial began popping up on web sites last year.
California Court Reporters Association spokesman Gary Cramer said that during the Simpson criminal trial, he saw people hawking trial transcripts along with T-shirts and buttons outside the Los Angeles criminal courts building.
"I think there's a vast difference in reporting on the case and in reproducing the transcript," Cramer said. "I would suggest to the media that they clearly have lots and lots of opportunities to report on the case, opportunities to quote from the transcript."
"If the media wants to compete with the court reporters on the enterprise side of the transcripts, they ought to go into the court reporting business," he added.
But attorney Kelli Sager, who represents CNN and Court TV in the transcripts dispute, called that view "constitutionally impermissible" in a Sept. 17 letter to Huseby.
"Put bluntly, you and your client's interpretation of the Government Code as somehow restricting the ability of the news media to report to the public on the contents of official court records -- even if that involves the republication of the entire record -- is astonishing," wrote Sager, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Seattle's Davis Wright Tremaine.
Huseby said he hoped to avoid a legal fight over the transcripts. Both Huseby and Court TV Law Center's Matters said a compromise might involve paying Dickson an extra fee to allow the publication of transcripts on the web site. Court TV also might agree to put a warning on its site against the unauthorized reproduction of the transcripts and provide a link to NetCourt's site.
Where there's the Web, there's a way, however. Matters said he doubted Dickson could keep hardcore Simpson trial followers from surreptitiously posting copies of the transcripts on the Net.
Todd Woody is a senior writer with The Recorder, a San Francisco legal daily where a version of this story first appeared. The Recorder is affiliated with Court TV.
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