Suit Filed Against Warner Bros. in Screenplay Theft

LOS ANGELES - Warner Brothers responded harshly on Thursday to a legal complaint over the authorship of its Clint Eastwood baseball movie, “Trouble With the Curve.” But its opponents did not back down.

Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood in the 2012 movie, “Trouble With the Curve.” The film's authorship has been challenged.

In an unusually sharp response to a lawsuit filed here last week, the studio publicly called the accusations of script theft “reckless and false.”

The studio and several of its business partners also said they had overwhelming evidence that the original script was created more than 15 years ago, without foul play, by its credited author, a virtually unknown screenwriter named Randy Brown. But Gerard P. Fox, a lawyer for a plaintiff, instantly dismissed the supposed evidence as “manufactured.”

Warner's response was in part an attempt - probably futile - to stem Hollywood table talk and media fascination with a suit that charged wrongdoing by both the studio and Mr. Eastwood's Malpaso Productions, though Mr. Eastwood was not personally included among more than a dozen named defendants.

The suit portrays a web of duplicity unusual even for the film business, with shenanigans only slightly less colorful than those in Elmore Leonard's movieland caper “Get Shorty.”

Among other charges, it contends that Mr. Brown knew very little about baseball but was set up as a bogus screenwriter, while a script actually written by a hidden third party wound its way through talent agencies and low-level producers until it found its home on the big screen with Mr. Eastwood.

In Hollywood, where everyone is eager to claim credit for a great idea, charges of script theft are as common as cocktail receptions, and usually as fleeting. Few lawsuits ultimately prevail, partly because claimants often overvalue an idea's originality.

But the aggrieved keep trying. Just last week, James Cameron was granted dismissal of a suit - one of several similar actions against him - that claimed he had misappropriated material in creating “Avatar.” Two days earlier, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in a copyright case connected to the 1980 film “Raging Bull.”

The complaint against Warner, filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, names Malpaso, the United Talent Agency and a series of lesser-known film figures. Those include Robert Lorenz, who has long been Mr. Eastwood's producing partner, and who directed “Trouble With the Curve.”

The suit was filed by Ryan A. Brooks, a former college baseball star who was scouted by the pros, but suffered an injury. Instead, he became a film producer successful enough to share credit for “Inocente,” a documentary short that won an Oscar earlier this year.

In his complaint, Mr. Brooks said that Mr. Lorenz and others were engaged in a conspiracy to credit Mr. Brown, a cover-band drummer who had little experience as a professional writer, with a sophisticated script about baseball scouts and a failing father-daughter relationship.

In Mr. Brooks's version of events, “Trouble With the Curve” was actually written by Don Handfield, a former character actor, whom Mr. Brooks hired to write a script called “Omaha,” based heavily on Mr. Brooks's knowledge of college baseball.

According to the complaint, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Handfield researched baseball on trips together. They created a crusty old widower who was much like the aged scout portrayed by Mr. Eastwood in “Trouble With the Curve.” And they peppered their work with details - a clog-dancing scene, players who had to work as peanut vendors, a long, painful confrontation with a mirror - that also appeared in “Trouble.”

“Omaha” particularly focused on a father-daughter story that, in Mr. Brooks's account, was based on his mother's experience with her own estranged father. In “Trouble,” Mr. Eastwood plays an aging father who reconciles with a daughter played by Amy Adams.

“Trouble” opened to mixed reviews and modest ticket sales on Sept. 21, 2012. By then, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Handfield had parted in a business dispute, and Mr. Handfield had directed his own pet project, a football fantasy called “Touchback.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 11, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fit for a Film: Suit Filed Against Warner Bros. in Screenplay Theft.