Tiger King star, Joseph Maldonado-Passage aka Joe Exotic may not have gotten the full pardon he hoped from out-going President Donald Trump, but he will have his chance in court again.
Exotic’s 22 year sentence for murder-for-hire; putting out a hit on adversary, Carole Baskin, will likely be shortened after a federal appeals court ruled that his initial sentencing in January of 2020 was incorrect. It was determined the trial court wrongly treated the two murder-for-hire convictions separately instead of jointly when calculating his prison term.
‘Tiger King’: New Sentencing For Joe Exotic; More Lawsuits for Documentary Makers
On January 28, Exotic will be resentenced. He will be transported from his current digs at a federal medical center in North Carolina to Oklahoma City for the hearing. All going well, he could shave around 5 years off his sentence. His sentencing for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records will stick.
It is still likely Exotic won’t ever live to be a free man again. He announced in November that he has aggressive prostate cancer.
While Exotic may be catching a small break, the producers of the Tiger King docuseries, it’s sequel, Tiger King 2 and spin-off- Tiger King: The Doc Antle story are having legal woes of their own.
Carole Baskin and her husband, Howard Baskin attempted to sue the Tiger King producers and Netflix before Tiger King 2’s release on the streaming platform on November 17. They had hoped to stop the docu-series sequel from ever dropping on Netflix over what they called “unauthorized” use of footage of Carole, Howard and their Big Cat Rescue Center.
The widely-panned series was released anyway and on December 15, the Baskins dropped the lawsuit.
However, as soon as they thought they were out of the water, the producers- Royal Goode Productions were sued again, this time for using unauthorized use of clips from the Jim Carrey hit, Ace Ventura 2.
The lawsuit claims that the show used the two clips “without permission or license”. A voice over on the documentary even pointed out that the clips are, indeed, from the movie.
Not only is this infringement, the plaintiff- Morgan Creek Entertainment, the film production company who own the rights to the movie believes that, in showing the snips of Carrey and the animals, it leads audiences to believe that Ace Ventura endorses what Exotic and other private zoo owners do to their animals.
Morgan Creek claims it tried to solve the dispute before filing the lawsuit, but after not being able to reach an agreement with Royal Goode Productions, is now seeking statutory damages which also cover attorney’s fees and is asking that the defendants be permanently prohibited from using any clips owned by the Morgan Creek Entertainment company.
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