Lynyrd Skynyrd band members won a federal permanent injunction Monday that prevents former drummer Artimus Pyle and Cleopatra Records from moving ahead with a movie depicting the 1977 plane crash that killed its lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.
U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet ruled in favor of the group's lead guitarist Gary Rossington, lead singer and Van Zant’s brother, Johnny Van Zant, and heirs of Ronnie Van Zant and the late guitarists Steve Gaines and Allen Collins, Reuters reported.
In a lawsuit to stop the movie, surviving band members said Pyle, who left the band in 1991, could tell his own life story, but not the band's, Reuters said. Sweet ruled that the movie "Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash," based on Pyle's story, violated a 1988 consent order governing the use of the Lynyrd Skynyrd name.
"Cleopatra is prohibited from making its movie about Lynyrd Skynyrd when its partner substantively contributes to the project in a way that, in the past, he willingly bargained away the very right to do just that; in any other circumstance, Cleopatra would be as 'free as a bird' to make and distribute its work," Sweet wrote, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Cleopatra attempted to convince Sweet that the movie would not represent any authorization from the band, that the production company was not a party to the agreements and that the film constituted free speech, noted the celebrity publication.
"This is a case in which the defendant has an affirmative constitutional right to engage in the speech for which it is being sued: in producing and releasing the film, Cleopatra is exercising its right to make a film about a newsworthy event from the past, a form of constitutionally protected free speech," Cleopatra's lawyer wrote, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The surviving members argued, and Sweet agreed, that Cleopatra could make a movie about Lynyrd Skynyrd and/or about the plane crash, but not with Pyle, The Hollywood Reporter said.
"What Cleopatra is not free to do, however, is to make such a movie in concert and participation with Pyle in violation of the restrictions imposed on him by the consent order, the surviving band members wrote for the court, per The Hollywood Reporter.