NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Legal Newsline) - A company that provided trucks and cast trailers to production crews filming “Law and Order” and other shows must pay the firm that owned the vehicles more than $100,000 after breaking a revenue-sharing agreement, a Tennessee appeals court ruled.
Old Hickory Coaches LLC, which was described as “being in the business of converting buses and trailers to meet the needs of individual actors such as Nicolas Cage and Don Johnson,” entered into an agreement in 2000 with Star Coach Rentals to provide trailers and trucks to production companies in New York City.
The “handshake deal” between Old Hickory’s owner, Sherry Wise, and Star Coach owner James Copeland was for the two companies to split rental income 50/50. Old Hickory would buy the equipment and perform major maintenance, while Star Coach would lease the vehicles out and handle routine maintenance.
Old Hickory provided as many as six trucks and trailers, two Winnebagos and a camera truck to Star Coach over the years, including “two-actor” trailers with separate dressing rooms. The trailers leased for $1,500 a week and the trucks for $1,000 a week, with contracts renewing yearly.
The trailers and trucks were leased to shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and all three Law & Order shows. For the majority of the time, Star Coach leased the vehicles for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The two firms got along until around 2007, when one of the production companies said it wouldn’t renew unless it got new trailers and trucks. Copeland and Wise visited a Play-Mor factory in Missouri and Old Hickory ordered two new trailers but not new trucks to pull them. Star Coach later complained the existing trucks weren’t heavy enough to pull the new trailers, so Copeland bought a 2008 Ford F450 king cab for $62,000.
In 2010 Wise began to suspect that Copeland was leasing her trailers and not sharing the revenue. Her suspicions were aroused when she found scripts and itineraries in the drawers of her trailers from other television shows and Central Park jobs.
Copeland justified withholding rent because he renovated the trailers, including upgrading the TVs and installing new carpet, fixtures and furniture. He also brought the trailers into compliance with New York City regulations and installed new generators. Copeland said Wise told him she didn’t have the money to do it his company did the work and so he repaid himself out of the rental fees.
Old Hickory sued in August 2016 for breach of contract over the missing payments. A judge heard the case in January 2020. The court awarded Old Hickory $101,500 for income from 2010 to 2015 and awarded Star Coach $12,415 for the major repairs it did after 2010, and declined attorneys’ fees for either side.
In July 2020, Old Hickory appealed. The Tennessee Court of Appeals at Nashville, in a Nov. 15 decision by Judge Carma Dennis McGee, upheld the verdict.
The appeals court rejected Old Hickory’s attempt to hold Copeland personally liable, but upheld the existence of an oral contract between the parties and held Star Coaches liable for breaching it by withholding the rental income.
By this time, Copeland said he’d had enough of the business.
“I decided that I was 72 years old and that enough aggravation and hardship was done, that I was going to downsize my business,” he testified in a deposition. “I was not going to deal with trailers any longer, and I didn’t want to spend my weekends underneath trailers repairing them, and that I was going to end my relationship” with the production company.