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Ambridge man's toy story: Disney studios copied my work
Thursday, December 23, 1999 By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Buzz Lightyear of "Toy Story" fame already struggles with the life-changing realization that he's just a plastic toy, not a real space hero.
Wait until he finds out a guy in Beaver County says he's not even an original character.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, John Wellington of Ambridge claims he came up with the idea in 1965 for Buzz, his pal Woody and other computer-animated creations featured in the "Toy Story" movie and its recent sequel.
Wellington, also known as "Johnny Dollar," says the Walt Disney Co. rejected his screenplay, "The Adventures of Johnny Justice," but stole his idea to make the hit film in the mid-1990s.
The lawsuit claims copyright infringement. It asks for an order stopping Disney from making money from Wellington's idea and forcing it to turn over its profits from the movie to him.
Wellington, who hand-delivered the paperwork for the lawsuit to the clerk's office in the U.S. Courthouse, couldn't be reached yesterday. He is described in the filing as a "professional songwriter and screenwriter who is a citizen and resident of the County of Beaver."
His attorney, Frank A. Bilotto of Aliquippa, didn't return a message left at his office in North Carolina.Walt Disney Co. declined comment.
This is what Wellington claims happened:
The central characters in Wellington's "Johnny Justice" were a spaceman, a cowboy and an outlaw named Bart. On April 17, 1987, he mailed the script to Disney in Burbank, Calif. A month later, the studio sent the script back and said Disney wasn't interested.
Nearly 10 years later, on Dec. 25, 1996, Wellington saw "Toy Story" and recognized "at least three indistinguishable characters" from his script. He also heard "numerous verbatim lines of dialogue" and many "unique similarities" between the plot of the movie and "Johnny Justice."
In addition to Walt Disney Co., the lawsuit also named as defendants Disney Chief Executive Officer Michael Eisner; writers Andrew Stanton, Peter Doctor, John Lasseter and Joseph Ranft; and the "Toy Story" distributor, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.
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