Judge Clears Actor Beatty to Sue Over ‘Dick Tracy’

A federal judge has ruled that actor Warren Beatty, who starred in and directed the 1990 movie “Dick Tracy,” can proceed with a lawsuit he filed in May against a unit of Tribune Co. over rights to the comic book detective.

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson denied Tribune Media Services Inc.’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit because the case involves issues of contract interpretation and “mixed questions of fact and law” that can’t be determined at this stage of the proceedings, according to a ruling filed Wednesday in the federal court in Los Angeles.

Tribune -- the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher and owner of the Los Angeles Times -- in 1985 assigned Beatty the movie, television and other rights to Dick Tracy. Beatty claims that the company didn’t properly follow the contract’s procedure to recapture the rights.

The actor seeks a ruling that he controls the rights and $30 million in damages.

Gary Weitman, a spokesman for Chicago-based Tribune, didn’t immediately return a call to his office after business hours. Cameron Myler, a lawyer for Tribune at Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz in New York, didn’t immediately return a call to her office after business hours.

“We’re pleased with the outcome on the motion to dismiss, but there’ll probably be other motions,” said Bertram Fields, a lawyer for Beatty at Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman, Machtinger & Kinsella in Los Angeles.

In the complaint filed May 13, Beatty said that Tribune’s claims had “clouded the title” to the Tracy rights and have made it “commercially impossible” for Beatty to produce another Dick Tracy project.