Judge Dismisses Frances Fisher’s Lawsuit Against SAG-AFTRA “With Prejudice”
30.07.2022 - 04:31
/ deadline.com
A federal judge has dismissed Frances Fisher’s lawsuit against SAG-AFTRA, in which the actress accused the union and several of its former and current leaders of breaching their duty of fair representation over the raising of eligibility requirements for coverage under the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan
. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder dismissed the suit with prejudice Thursday, meaning that Fisher and her co-plaintiffs cannot refile it. Snyder previously has dismissed the suit without prejudice and allowed Fisher to file an amended complaint.
Fisher, who is first vice president of the union’s Los Angeles Local and a member of its national board of directors, named former SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, former national executive director David White, chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez and several other SAG-AFTRA officials as defendants. Other plaintiffs in the case included SAG-AFTRA members David Andrews, Belinda Balaski, Stephen Hart, Raymond Harry Johnson, Anne Lockhart and Toby Stone-Mandelberg.
Read the judge’s ruling here.
“With respect to plaintiffs’ DFR [Duty of Fair Representation] claim,” the judge wrote, “the Court finds that amendment would be futile, as plaintiffs’ have been unable in successive complaints to allege facts that meet the causation standard or overcome the six-month statute of limitations. Likewise, plaintiffs have been unable to state a cognizable Section 501 claim in successive complaints, and plaintiffs – in their briefing and in oral argument – did not proffer any further allegations that they could plead that would suggest, for example, that the Defendants’ nondisclosures harmed the Union as a whole, or that Carteris,