Geraldo Rivera was so furious at being sued Tuesday over an alleged debt to his former talent agency that he all but challenged the firm’s execs to a duel.
“This is an example of the rapacious greed of Hollywood agents. I’m going to fight them to the death!” Rivera fumed when the Daily News asked him about the suit filed against him by William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC.
“No way I’m going to pay them one penny — ever!” Rivera raged over his cell phone from the placid state of Maine.
“It’ll happen over my dead body!”
Lawyers for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment asserted in court papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court that it has represented Rivera since 1985, and that its last contract with the mustached newsman, signed in 2009, required him to pay WMEE 10% of his gross annual compensation from his employer, Fox News.
Rivera, who hosts the Fox show “Geraldo at Large,” stopped paying the agency in 2010, two years before his contract expired, WMEE contends in its suit.
Mad-as-hell Rivera sees things differently.
“They know they have no contract with me,” Rivera said.
He insisted that since 1994, his contract has been exclusively with James Griffin, an agent who worked at WMEE until 2010, when he moved to Paragon Agency, based in Los Angeles.
“Jim Griffin has been my agent since 1985, when I got fired by NBC. He found me work and stuck with me through thick and thin,” Rivera said, refusing to say what Fox pays him per year.
The newsman argued that, beginning in 1994 — when Griffin was still at WMEE — he began crossing out provisions in contracts with the agency that suggested he owes anything to anybody except Griffin himself.
WMEE’s attorney did not return a phone call from The News.
In court papers, WMEE quotes the contract as saying that Rivera must pay the agency 10% of his annual gross pay under “any and all extensions, renewals, modifications, substitutions for and additions to such contracts whenever made and whether procured by (WMEE), (Rivera) or any third party.”
bross@nydailynews.com
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