Murdoch News, a Leon Black Update, & Paul Newman’s Warring Heirs

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Happy Monday. I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker! Today, I dive into a dispute over Paul Newman’s legacy. His family is fighting the charitable foundation that operates a hugely successful food business, and this is the sort of case that I think will become more common. I’ll explain why. Plus, LeBron James, Kanye West, Cardi B, and a multi-million dollar SLAPP!

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Paul Newman’s Warring Heirs & Metaverse Estate Planning

The late Hollywood heartthrob turned salad-dressing entrepreneur left behind a billion-dollar food empire and very, very specific instructions for his estate. But even the best laid plans can go awry when there’s money on the line.

ERIQ GARDNER

What’s a guy gotta do to make his intentions clear? Take Paul Newman, who beginning in 1986 repeatedly sat down with a friend to record recollections of his life. The idea was to use these interviews to create an autobiography. Then, in 1998, Newman halted the project and burned the tapes. But evidently, throwing hundreds of recordings into a pit of fire is the sort of move that’s open to interpretation. The transcripts survived, and so this past week, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir, was published. “If he didn’t want [the book] put out there, I don’t think he would have kept [the transcripts],” Clea Newman Soderlund, the actor’s youngest daughter, explained to The Wall Street Journal. And that fire? Ethan Hawke, who used the transcripts to...

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