Three defendants accused of duping Harper Lee out of the copyright to To Kill a Mockingbird bolstered their legal team this week when a federal judge in Manhattan allowed Pepper Hamilton IP cochair Vincent Carissimi to represent them in the litigation.
Carissimi entered the case following a Tuesday ruling by U.S. district court judge Robert Sweet that the Pepper Hamilton partner, who is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, but not New York, could serve as counsel for the defendants pro hac vice.
Sweet's ruling comes some three months after Lee, 87, sued literary agent Samuel Pinkus; Pinkus’s wife, Leigh Ann Winick; and onetime Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate-turned-investigative journalist Gerald Posner for allegedly exploiting the author’s infirmities to assign the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel’s copyright to Pinkus and a company he controlled.
