It will never be as memorable as A Civil Action, The Verdict or My Cousin Vinny. But there’s no denying that by suing IMDb, 41-year-old actress Huong Huang (a.k.a. Junie Hoang) has cleverly cast herself in the best lead role of her career.

Per a THR Esq. report by guest contributor (and attorney) Venkat Balasubramani, all sorts of fun testimony transpired Tuesday in the Pacific Northwest courtesy of Huang, her agent and IMDb’s customer service manager. And… if folks at a certain other I-acronym organization are paying attention, more real-life drama may be in the plaintiff’s future:

Hoang emphasized that her income decreased following IMDb’s display of her true birthdate. She testified that she amended her tax returns and that the amounts of money disclosed in tax filings did not present the full extent of her income.

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Well, this was infinitely more complicated than it needed to be. After pumping 102 bullets into the truck of Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, during the hunt for Christopher Dorner, LAPD volunteered to replace the truck, which the women used to deliver newspapers. When it came time to actually make good on its promise, however, the LAPD tried to force the women to pay the taxes on the new truck, claiming its hands were tied by the IRS.

According to the LA Times, the LAPD finally came to its senses yesterday and worked out a reasonable solution: give the women $40,000 so they can buy their own truck, and still afford to pay the relevant taxes.

The voluntary settlement still doesn’t prevent the pair from suing LAPD, particularly for shooting Hernandez twice in the neck. We’ll see if it will still buys the goodwill that it should have if it had been handled sensibly.

OK, this is an odd one. Matthew Keys, a social media editor at Reuters and a former employee of the Tribune Company-owned Fox affiliate KTXL in Sacramento, has just been charged by the feds with helping Anonymous hack into the Tribune Company website in late 2010. More specifically, they are charging Keys with giving away log in keys to the Tribune website in an online chat room. Someone then took the log in data and used it to mess with the online version of an LA Times news story.

From the Times:

The indictment says Keys provided members of the hacker group Anonymous with log-in credentials for a computer server belonging to KTXL FOX 40’s corporate parent, the Tribune Co.

According to the indictment, Keys identified himself on an Internet chat forum as a former Tribune Co. employee.

After providing log-in credentials, Keys allegedly encouraged the Anonymous members to disrupt the website.  According to the indictment, at least one of the computer hackers used the credentials provided by Keys to log into the Tribune Co. server, and ultimately that hacker made changes to the web version of a Los Angeles Times news feature.

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The Hollywood Reporter says that Current TV and Keith Olbermann have reached a settlement over his high-profile sacking last year. Not surprisingly, the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Olbermann and Current released a joint statement to the trade.

“The parties are pleased to announce that a settlement has occurred, and that the terms are confidential. Nothing more will be disclosed regarding the settlement.”

More from THR:

The move comes days after Olbermann filed extensive summary judgment motions (read in full) in advance of a May trial date in Los Angeles Superior Court. Olbermann claims he was improperly terminated without cause from his Countdown show a year into his five-year, $50 million contract with the network. He argues that Current and its co-founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt also trashed him in the press, used his name and image in connection with a commercial for AT&T and denied him editorial control over specific shows.

The LAPD PR-nightmare continues unabated. After mistakenly shooting more than 100 holes through the truck of Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, (who also took two bullets to the neck) during the hunt for Christopher Dorner, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck apologized and promised to replace their truck.

The new truck, however, is apparently not going to happen, according to NBC4, who spoke with the pair’s attorney Glen Jonas.

According to Jonas, LAPD and Galpin Ford wanted his clients to pose for a photo opportunity and pay income tax on the truck. The women no longer want the truck after they were told they needed to fill out a 1099 form for the donation, Jonas said Monday.

“You tried to murder the woman, now you’re telling her she can’t have a four-wheel drive, you’re telling her she can’t sell it and you’ve got to be taxed on it?” Jonas said. “How would anyone react to that?”

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It was the sting that made him a household name, but James O’Keefe is paying for it now. Wonkette reports that the Breitbart protege just agreed to pay $100,000 to former California ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera–who O’Keefe filmed without consent for his doctored pimps-and-hoes sting operation that helped shut down the community organizing group in 2010. You know the one.

Vera was fired after appearing in O’Keefe’s video, even though it later turned out that O’Keefe’s “investigation” into unethical ACORN activity had been edited to look far worse than it actually was.

From Wonkette:

According to a copy of the deal, obtained late last night by your wonkettes and viewable after the jump, O’Keefe has also agreed to ink an 11-word non-apology apology, that sources close to reality are calling “insincere” and “suuuuuuuch bullshit.”

According to the final 5-page agreement, signed by O’Keefe and his legal counsel Mike Madigan this past Tuesday, the boy detective now publicly “regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family.” O’Keefe and his counsel have also consented to fork over the $100,000 within 30 business days of the settlement agreement’s being signed.

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An LA-based media consultant is claiming that selling Current TV to Al Jazeera was all his idea. THR Esq. has the eight-page complaint filed Tuesday in California Superior Court.

The allegations hinge on a July 23, 2012 meeting and Power Point presentation. On that summer Monday, John Terenzio claims he met with Current TV board member Richard Blum and laid out how the Qatar-based broadcaster could be a perfect fit. Blum, a billionaire, is married to California state U.S. Senator for California Dianne Feinstein.

Terenzio is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and currently listed as living in Los Angeles with his wife and three children. From his Tri American Productions (TAP Inc.) biography:

Terenzio served as the president of programming and publishing at Broadband Sports, specializing in sports content for new media and television platforms… He has created, developed and produced virtually every type of reality programming, including prime time network news, television and digital sports, and programming in the court and “talk” syndicated genres.

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San Francisco-based journalist Laura Hooper Beck is night editor for jezebel.com, community manager for vegweb.com, a contributor to VegNews magazine and founder of the blog Vegansaurus! It is those last two strands that have come together unusually this morning in the form of a post on Vegansaurus! titled “Domestic Drama Sends Owners of Vegan Magazine to Court.”

The headline is in reference to Joe Connelly and Colleen Holland, the couple that founded VegNews magazine in 2000 and are now embroiled in a very ugly legal battle. From Beck’s excellent summary of legal briefs filed back and forth in August of 2012 and February of this year, it appears that Connelly is wrongfully trying to claim that the publication is his alone. Or, as Beck puts it, “Something stinks, and for once, it’s not home-brewed kombucha:”

A cross-complaint filed by Colleen on February 7 alleges that she and Joe are now — and have always been — equal partners in the business… In documents and declarations obtained through the Superior Court of California, several close friends, consultants, and advisors who have been present since the inception of VegNews, say they believe Colleen is telling the truth.

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Wading through the full string of reader comments to this particular Yahoo! News item would likely take almost as long as a visit to Disneyland. At press time, the tally for “Black Family Claims Disney’s White Rabbit Character Refused to Touch Their Kids” has passed 20,000 published reactions and is still climbing rapidly.

The Lookout blogger Claudine Zap picked up on FOX San Diego and CBSLA reports and ka-boom; her account of Jason and Amelia Black‘s complaint over allegedly “racist” treatment directed at their kids last August by the person operating the Alice in Wonderland White Rabbit costume is a most-popular read and comments magnet. The family wants the resort to publicly apologize and fire the actor who played the Rabbit. Many readers meanwhile are ridiculing the allegations:

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In the spring of 2008, former CAA kingpin Michael Ovitz answered an odd-sounding question in an LA courtroom. It was during the trial of now incarcerated former PI Anthony Pellicano and went like this with defense attorney Chad Hummel, who was representing an LAPD sergeant:

Hummel: Did you ever hire Mr. Pellicano to put a fish on Anita Busch’s car?
Ovitz: Absolutely not.

Five years later, despite that denial, Busch and Ovitz are still legally entangled in a civil lawsuit. Per a THR Esq. update by Eriq Gardner, Ovitz is asking for “sanctions against Busch, summary judgment in the lawsuit on the basis that her claims are time-barred and the right to learn through discovery what else Busch was working on at the time in question.”

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