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Frontline Entertainment Management is taking Criminal Minds actor Thomas Gibson to court over money allegedly owed to the firm’s Craig Dorfman.
According to a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Dorfman has represented Gibson since 1996 — through five different publicists, three business managers and three talent agencies. The two are said to have met when Gibson was acting on Chicago Hope, and Dorfman, first representing Gibson as a talent agent, says he convinced Gibson to audition for Dharma & Greg.
“The only constant in GIbson’s life and career has been Dorfman, and now Gibson has decided to burn Dorfman as well, and not pay him for his years of work,” states the lawsuit (read here).
The lawsuit attempts to burn Gibson right back with the revelation that he makes $200,000 per episode for CBS’ Criminal Minds and word that he’s known as “Captain Vanilla” among industry professionals thanks to his “lack of professionalism.”
Dorfman claims credit for doing stuff like cajoling network execs and angry producers after Gibson sparred with co-workers and making up excuses for last-minute cancellations of press tours. The manager says he picked the actor up from jail one time after being arrested for drunk driving and defended his client after the “sending [of] lewd videos and messages to a stranger he met online.”
It’s all setup to the primary allegation that Gibson has breached an agreement by failing to pay 10 percent of his salary to Dorfman, not only for Criminal Minds but for such independent films as Come Away Home, Berkeley and I’ll Believe You. The contract is said to be an oral one, agreed to in January 2003.
The end of the relationship between the two is described as coming after Gibson demanded earlier this year that the commissions be reduced to 7.5 percent, and when Dorfman refused, he was terminated. The plaintiffs are now seeking at least $480,000 in damages.
The lawsuit was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
Email: Eriq.Gardner@THR.com
Twitter: @eriqgardner
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