Judge Rules 'If I Did It' Ghostwriter Didn't Plagiarize

Posted by Matthew Heller

A restaurant owner who claims O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book is a ripoff of his work cannot assert a monopoly on the facts of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a Los Angeles judge has ruled.

As we previously posted here, Amir Pourtemour sued, among others, Simpson, ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves and Fred Goldman for copyright infringement in November, alleging "If I Did It" plagiarizes two chapters from his self-published "Perfect Alibi: O.J. Simpson's Strategy of Murder." A motion to dismiss filed by Fenjves was the first test of Pourtemour's claims and U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner had little trouble granting it.

“[N]o copyright infringement claim may arise out of facts being recited in one’s work simply because another work recited the same facts at a prior occasion,” he said in a minute order.

Fred Goldman is a defendant because a bankruptcy judge awarded the rights to "If I Did It" to the Goldman family to help satisfy its $38 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson. The Goldmans view the book as his confession and Fenjves said in his motion that "If I Did It" is an accurate account of the "details of the night the murders took place."