Vivendi, the company that the members of Spinal Tap filed a $400 million royalties suit against, has filed a motion to dismiss the case.
Vivendi’s motion claims that Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean cannot file a suit, saying that only Spinal Tap Productions, which granted the rights to the movie to their subsidiary StudioCanal in 1982, has the right to file such a lawsuit over the film.
The Hollywood Reporter says the motion also claims that Spinal Tap never hired an accountant to review the company’s records and never requested an audit. The suit states, “Thus, they lack the information they would need to assert that StudioCanal rendered erroneous or improper Spinal Tap participation statements, if that had happened.”