Mar 13, 2007 07:54 PM
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Hollywood, 2:11 PM
Tue Feb 9
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The cancelled O.J. Simpson confessional multimedia extravaganza, If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, may have cost Judith Regan her job and reputation, and News Corp. a great deal of embarrassment and unwanted press, but the exonerated subject ended up coming out mostly ahead: The show never aired, copies of the book were mostly destroyed save for a few on eBay, and Simpson claims his fee for the hypothetical mea culpa was quickly cashed and spent. Now, an L.A. superior court judge has ruled that the rights to the book—one of O.J.'s only remaining assets—must be put up for auction, with all proceeds paid to Fred Goldman, who's still owed the majority of a $33.5 million 1997 civil suit judgment:
A judge ordered on Tuesday that rights to O.J. Simpson's aborted book, "If I Did It," be sold at auction to help satisfy a civil judgment against the former football star — meaning the book could find its way into stores. [...]Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg's decision comes at the request of Ron Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, who expressed outrage at the original publication of "If I Did It" and now finds himself putting the manuscript back into circulation.
"The Goldmans were horrified as to the content, but the real horror was that Simpson was profiting," Goldman's lawyer, David Cook, said. "O.J. is now on the block. On the right hand we get to sell the book, and on the left we get the money."
Perhaps this signals the end of the notorious book's long journey from lightbulb in an exploitative literary editor's head to Barnes & Noble store shelves, where consumers can ultimately decide for themselves whether they are curious enough to hear what Simpson has to say about his involvement in the brutal murders to invest in the volume, or the unabridged audiobook version, grippingly narrated by Maya Angelou over the course of its six CDs.
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