Taking “Outwit Outplay Outlast” off the island

It seems that Survivor’s philosophy has a home beyond the exotic islands on which it is filmed!

In 2008 Conrad Riggs sued his former business partner Mark Burnett, the creator of the reality TV show “Survivor”, claiming he was owed $70 million from the show’s profits.

While that case was settled in 2012, later that same year Riggs found himself on the receiving end of the current ongoing Survivor lawsuit from Layne Leslie Britton concerning a breach of contract.

Layne Leslie Britton claimed he was a consultant who helped create the unique and lucrative financial agreement between the network and producers and that he and Riggs came to an agreement in 2000 which stated that in exchange for Britton’s advice and consultation he was entitled to 35% of Riggs’ share of revenue from Survivor from season 2 onwards and 40 percent of Riggs’ share for other shows he worked on for Burnett.

Showing moves and counter-moves that any “Survivor” contestant would be proud of, in answer to Britton’s claims that he had received payments from 2002, but they ceased in 2006, Riggs argued that he hired Britton, who was a practicing lawyer, to give him legal advice and all up he had paid him $1.8 million for what was essentially part-time work done over the course of a year and a half – claiming he was, in fact, overpaid and so countersued Britton on the basis that Britton had engaged in professional misconduct as an attorney by breaching his fiduciary duty in putting his own financial interests above his client’s.

In October 2015, the Los Angeles Superior Court judge gave a partial summary judgement which tossed out Riggs’ claim that Britton was his attorney but further ruled that there were disputed issues of fact underlying Britton’s claim and accordingly set up a trial to determine what, if anything, Britton was owed.

The trial was scheduled to take place in December 2015, but Riggs’s company filed a Chapter 11 petition for bankruptcy just hours before the trial was set to start, so it has been pushed it back until February 2016.

We now await the outcome of the trial to see who the real “Survivor” is!