Lawyers Shop For Tape Buyers

Even while Judge Lance A. Ito weighs how much of the contested tapes of ex-police detective Mark Fuhrman to allow before the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, lawyers for the screenwriter who made them have been discussing their possible sale with the tabloid media.

Although screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny told ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” she would never sell the tapes, her lawyers have discussed with the tabloid television show “Hard Copy,” print tabloid weeklies and a book publisher how much they would pay.

At the same time, the lawyers, Matthew Schwartz and Ronald Regwan, have asked Ito to demand that reporters reveal their sources for leaked excerpts of the tapes, which the lawyers claim could bleed value from their client’s intellectual property.

How many takers the lawyers actually found is not clear. One who turned them down was Michael Viner, co-owner of Dove Books of Beverly Hills, which has published several books related to the Simpson trial, including those of Nicole Brown Simpson’s friend Faye Resnick and jurors Tracy Kennedy and Michael Knox.

“You have to at least convince yourself there is some literary value and some good faith attempt at literary value,” Viner said. “This didn’t even qualify on the slimmest grounds. And from our point of view, there was suspicions of the motives involved.”

Schwartz approached Dove two weeks ago, Viner said. The asking price was $500,000 for the transcripts of the tapes, which would be printed in book format.

Regwan would not discuss specifics of the pitch to Dove Books, but insists that McKinny has turned down all offers, from “mostly tabloids,” for the transcripts, even though the offers have been in the “six figures.”