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Case file s407 · Literature and art · 2007
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2007
Died
Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, 2007; A.A. Milne, 31 January 1956
Place
Los Angeles; Hartfield, England
Field
children's literature licensing · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
California law · Common law
Historical event
Growth of character merchandising
Literature and artNowNorth AmericaEuropeUnited Kingdom
AI illustration: Ashdown Forest, East Sussex, the wood behind the Winnie-the-Pooh stories
Illustration made with AI for celebrity.estate.

The Winnie-the-Pooh rights holder sued Disney for 13 years, and lost because its investigator took Disney's trash

Milne sold North American merchandising rights to Winnie-the-Pooh to the agent Stephen Slesinger in 1930†. In 1961 Slesinger's widow, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, licensed the rights to Disney for 4 per cent of Disney's merchandise revenue. A 1983 agreement followed. In 1991 her company, Stephen Slesinger Inc., sued Disney for royalties, saying Disney owed money on unreported software sales of $35 million and video sales of $3 billion. Disney said the contract did not cover those products. Disney showed that a private investigator hired by the Slesinger side had taken more than 6,000 pages of documents from Disney's trash bins and offices over several years. In March 2004 Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles McCoy dismissed the case with prejudice, finding the company had "tampered with the administration of justice." The appeal was still pending when Lasswell died in 2007. An appeals court later upheld the dismissal, citing "the deliberate and egregious misconduct of SSI itself." Pooh is one of Disney's largest franchises†.

What the law took from it

A royalty claim can be lost entirely through how the evidence is gathered, whatever the amount owed.

Sources
  1. thedailyrecord.comPress
  2. Deseret NewsPress
  3. Tampa Bay TimesPress
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The Winnie-the-Pooh rights holder sued Disney for 13 years, and lost because its investigator took Disney's trash,” story s407, https://www.celebrity.estate/disney-2007, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

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