JENNIFER LOPEZ - J.LO TO TESTIFY OVER SOUTH BEACH LAWSUIT

J.LO TO TESTIFY OVER SOUTH BEACH LAWSUIT

A New York judge had ordered JENNIFER LOPEZ to submit to a deposition over a lawsuit regarding her cancelled TV drama South Beach. Writer Jack Bunick sued six defendants, including Lopez and U.S. broadcasters UPN and CBS Television, claiming the makers of the show had stolen his idea from 1999 from a pilot episode of a programme called South Beach Miami. In February (07), the Latina beauty's lawyer Orin Snyder argued that although Lopez was an executive producer of South Beach, she had minimal involvement in the creation and development of the show and was brought in later to "lend celebrity to the show". Snyder told U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman that Bunick had sued Lopez for "for tactical reasons, in an apparent attempt to obtain some perceived leverage by targetting and harassing a celebrity in a case where she has no meaningful testimony to give and no legitimate reason for being named as a defendant in the first place". Bunick's lawyer Sheldon Farber fired back, "Her celebrity is not a shield for her to use to avoid direct testimony in a case in which she has not been named frivolously. "I am unaware that one of the perks of fame is protection from legal process. She may be inconvenienced by an appearance at a deposition. I can assure the court that I will not ask for her autograph." Judge Pitman has ordered Lopez to make herself available to lawyers in the case before 11 June (07). Bunick's lawsuit is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction banning any future broadcasts of South Beach, which was cancelled in February 2006 after only eight episodes.