Bombay High Court orders interim handover of 12 films of Marathi actor Dada Kondke to Everest Entertainment

The Bombay High Court recently passed an interim order directing two film laboratories to hand over the negatives or print positives of 12 films belonging to the late Marathi actor Dada Kondke to Everest Entertainment LLP, a media company. [Everest Entertainment LLP v. Hridaynath D. KaduDeshmukh & Ors.].A single judge bench of Justice RI Chagla passed the order after noting that another bench of the Court had earlier found that the films cannot be handed over to anyone but Everest. “Considering that this Court had already found that Evesrest had made out a prima facie case that they have been assigned the rights in the subject films by More who was in turn bequeathed the right in the subject films by the copyright owner, Late Dadasaheb Kondke, it would only follow that the Everest is entitled to the negatives/print positives of the subject films,” the judge held..Everest Entertainment had approached the Court in May 2023 urging for a declaration that the media company held the rights over these 12 films.As such, it also urged the High Court to direct the Bombay Film Enterprises Private Limited and National Film Development Corporation Ltd (NFDC) to hand over the film prints.The company claimed that Kondke had intially assigned the copyrights over these films by way of a will to one Manik More. As per Everest Entertainment, the film rights were then assigned to the media company by More.The plea filed by Everest was vehemently contested by Shahir Dada Kondke Pratishthan, a Trust that is stated to have been set up as per Kondke’s will. This Trust has claimed that the rights to these films were bequeathed to it.More, meanwhile, had claimed that she had acquired the rights in the said films based on the will dated January 2, 1988, executed by Kondke. She also asserted that a competent court had granted her probate of the will through an order dated December 19, 2008, and that an appeal challenging this order was dismissed on July 22, 2019..On May 3, 2023, a co-ordinate bench of the High Court granted interim relief to Everest by restraining the Trust from claiming to any third party that they had any rights over the 12 films. It also restrained the two film laboratories from handing over any material on the films in their custody to the Trust or anyone else other than Everest.The matter will be heard next on August 23..Senior Advocate Ashish Kamat with Advocates Hiren Kamod, Ravindra Suryawanshi, Tanvi Nandgaonkar, Krunal Mehta, Archis Bhatt and Anil Dubey briefed by Bar & Brief Attorneys appeared for Everest.Advocates AA Garge and Jitendra Oak appeared for the trustees. Advocates Aniesh Jadhav, Rushikesh Kekane and Ketan Dhavle appeared for the two labs. Advocate Yogesh Thorat appeared for More..[Read order]