Two months after Jeff Shell was axed as president of Paramount over accusations of loose lips and more, the ex-exec and the David Ellison-run conglomerate have settled with the self-styled professional gambler who threatened to bring the whole house of cards down.
“Plaintiff R.J. Cipriani hereby requests dismissal of the entire action, with prejudice, as to all parties and all causes of action — that is, of all causes of action asserted in his Complaint and his First Amended Complaint, as against all named Defendants, including Jeff Shell, Laura Shell, Paramount Skydance Corporation, RedBird Capital Partners LLC, David Ellison, Lawrence J. Ellison, and the individual director Defendants,” the June 9 filing from Cipriani lawyer Steven J. Aaronoff stated. “To the extent any Defendant was previously dismissed from this action without prejudice, this Request dismisses Plaintiff’s claims against that Defendant with prejudice, so that the dismissal of the entire action is with prejudice as to every party.”
Ex-Para prez and ex-NBCUniversal top dog Shell, who had been introduced to Cipriani by their then mutual attorney Patty Glaser, filed a similar with prejudice dismissal on Tuesday too for his own countersuit that alleged the whole thing was a shakedown. For all practical purposes, the mutual filings bringing the matter to an end in the courts.
As usual, no details of the deal that put the breaks on any trial or continuation of the suit and countersuit were made public. However, despite Cipriani seeking over $150 million in his initial suit, there was no payoff exchanged, I hear.
Reps for Paramount and Shell did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the dismissal filings. Cipriani’s lawyer Aaronoff also did not reply when contacted by Deadline.
Mired in the legal mess and his own bad judgement, Shell was shown the door at Paramount on April 8.
The anticipated firing came within days of a report from law firm Gibson Dunn that cleared Shell of claims by so-called fixer Cipriani that the executive had divulged confidential and potentially explosive information. The initial $150 milli breach of contract and fraud complaint from the Vegas casino battling gambler against Shell and his wife, wihich later added Paramount itself, CEO David Ellison, his Oracle founder father Larry Ellison and a swath of advisors, accused the media executive gossiping about deals surrounding UFC, the $111 billion Warner Bros Discovery deal and, more recently, Donald Trump.
“We’re paying way too much for Warner Bros,” Shell is alleged to have told Cipriani of the big big buck bid to acquire the home of Superman and The Matrix, topping Netflix’s $89 billion bid for WB’s studio and streaming assets. “If we could just wait another year, we could get it a whole lot cheaper,” Shell is said to have declared in a not all together unreasonable assessment.
Cipriani, who has already submitted a whistleblower filing with the SEC over Shell and the $7.7 billion UFC deal, declares that additional details and more WBD tidbits were unveiled by the Paramount exec in a February 2 face-to-face meeting “at the offices of a prominent Los Angeles entertainment law firm,” clearly aka GlaserWeil.
Now, like in the Octagon, everyone has retreated to their corners.
