*A Los Angeles judge has ordered Wesley Snipes to make good on a $1.7 million default judgment to his former talent agency, which assisted him in earning lead roles in four motion pictures.
According to documents made public Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Workman signed off on the award after Snipes failed to respond to a summons in the breach-of-oral-contract lawsuit, which was filed against him in July 2006 by United Talent Agency, reports E! Online.
The complaint alleged that Snipes, 45, verbally agreed in November 2002 to give UTA 10 percent of his salary for any roles the company secured for him. UTA says it negotiated lead parts for Snipes in 2004's “Blade: Trinity,” for which he was paid $13 million; the little-seen 2005 crime drama “Chaos”; and the direct-to-video films, “The Shooter” and “Middle Man.”
The agency filed a lawsuit claiming Snipes reneged on the deal and failed to pay commissions before he fired UTA in February 2006. After UTA's lawyers said they where unable to serve the actor notice of the complaint in person, Superior Court Commissioner Barry D. Kohn permitted them to publish a summons informing Snipes of the lawsuit in two newspapers, the Daily Journal of Los Angeles, where Snipes conducts business and The Record in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Snipes owns a residence.
Neither Snipes nor his lawyer responded to the complaint by last Thursday’s deadline, which prompted Workman to give the actor's camp one last chance to review the case and default request by setting a hearing for Sept. 26. But by the end of the session, the judge reversed himself and signed a document entering the $1.7 million judgment into the record.
Meanwhile, Snipes’s tax evasion trial is set to begin Oct. 22 in Ocala Florida. The actor is charged with eight counts of cheating the Internal Revenue Service out of $12 million by filing fraudulent returns. If convicted, Snipes could face up to 16 years in prison.
As previously reported, the film star says he is innocent and being targeted because of his race. His lawyers have also asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges on those grounds, claiming prosecutors failed to seek similar charges against his two white codefendants.
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