A long and complicated case involving aviation-thriller author John Nance came to at least a temporary close this week, as a judge dismissed the author's suit against Doubleday and St. Martin's and ruled that he will have to pay $350,000 as part of their countersuit.
Judge Sidney Stein of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan found that the defendants perpetrated no breach of contract or fraud against Nance and awarded no money for the time Nance spent reworking his manuscript. Stein also ruled that Nance must reimburse $350,000, the amount the two publishers paid him as advances for unpublished titles.
The suit, first filed in 1999, centers on a book called Blackout, which the houses rejected as unpublishable several times. Nance eventually sold the book for more than $500,000 to Putnam, which did release it. But he continued the fight against SMP and Doubleday, alleging fraud and breach of contract, and also citing the houses' unwillingness to publish his next title.
Stein found that Nance didn't have enough evidence to establish any of his charges. He ruled that there's no reason to think Nance's sales figures for previous titles played a role in the publishers' decision, as Nance alleged, and, even if they did, this would not necessarily constitute fraud. In definitive language, he also rebutted Nance's argument when he described how the publisher made many credible attempts to work with Nance on a satisfactory rewrite. There has been no word yet on whether Nance will appeal.
