Ms. Chatillon is a media and commercial litigator in Sonnenschein’s Litigation Practice. During her 30-year career, Ms. Chatillon has worked in all facets of the media and entertainment industry, including most recently as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Scholastic Corporation, the global children's publishing, education and media company. Ms. Chatillon has also counseled and represented book publishers, movie studios, magazines, newspapers, internet content providers, television and cable entities, and independent film producers.
Ms. Chatillon has extensive intellectual property experience, including transactional work, counseling and litigation. One of the highlights of her time as General Counsel at Scholastic was helping to lead a diverse team to prevent the piracy and premature release on the Internet of the contents of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book of the Harry Potter series.
Ms. Chatillon’s copyright litigation experience includes representing The Nation magazine at trial, in a Second Circuit appeal and before the U.S. Supreme Court in Harper & Row, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, one of the seminal Supreme Court cases on copyright infringement. While in-house at Miramax, she deflected idea theft/copyright litigation over the novel Summerland by Michael Chabon, a case that was filed and dismissed. In between, she worked on cases involving J.D. Salinger’s unpublished letters and idea theft under New York law and advised movie studios, magazines, book publishers, television networks and newspapers on idea theft and copyright issues in virtually every conceivable context.
From her time working both in law firms and in-house, Ms. Chatillon has gained enormous experience in copyright outside of litigation. She has advised prominent movie studios, book publishers and magazines on complex copyright issues, including acquisition advice and structuring for dramatic rights, termination and renewal issues. Ms. Chatillon also provided prepublication advice to the producers of the documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11. In addition to reviewing the film before release for libel, privacy and copyright issues, Ms. Chatillon provided advice after the film’s release on federal election law and other distribution issues and successfully defended the film’s distributors against complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission.
In the media and entertainment and First Amendment areas, Ms. Chatillon has litigated libel and commercial cases for companies such as Newsday, McGraw-Hill, and American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media), as well as performed prepublication review for magazines, newspapers, films, network news divisions, and book publishers and authors. She appeared in federal and state courts nationwide on a variety of content-related litigation, and she was successful in quashing a subpoena to a reporter in federal court under the Second Circuit’s Gonzales case.
Representative Experience
While at Scholastic Corporation (2006–2009), Ms. Chatillon served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, overseeing a 30+ person legal department that performed all legal functions for the company’s domestic and international subsidiaries, including international operations, managing complex litigations, regulatory compliance, acquisitions and divestitures, intellectual property protection and rights, disclosure and corporate issues, COPPA and other privacy-related issues, and providing support and corporate governance advice.
During her first stint as a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (2003-2006), Ms Chatillon combined traditional media related and commercial litigation, with specialized counseling and advice. Her work included litigation for The Tribune and other media companies, including McGraw Hill and American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media), counseling for newspapers, book publishers, cable companies, internet operations, and film and television companies, pro bono work for human rights organizations, and prepublication review and Federal Election advice in connection with the preparation and release of Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary by Michael Moore. She appeared twice on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, speaking as an expert on FCC indecency rulings and on First Amendment issues relating to press subpoenas, as well as being quoted several times in The New York Times.
As an Executive Vice President at Miramax Film Corp. (1998–2003), Ms. Chatillon developed and implemented an acquisition structure for Talk magazine and Miramax Books that included a system for routinely acquiring dramatic rights for books and magazine articles (a first in the industry). She managed the successful synergistic relationship between the book division and Miramax Films, which resulted in dozens of projects in various stages of development for books and movies, and supervised all business affairs and legal work for the book division. Ms. Chatillon also provided copyright advice to Miramax on rights acquisitions, including renewal, termination and other issues, and drafted and negotiated contracts for such acquisitions
Ms. Chatillon also held several positions at ABC, Inc. (1989–94), including principal in-house counsel for ABC News. In that position, she conducted or supervised pre-broadcast review of all ABC News programming and content for The Kansas City Star, counseled ABC News on all newsgathering and broadcasting issues, co-wrote (with the head of News Practices) the network's News Policy Manual, oversaw copyright matters, negotiated contracts with other networks or third parties on news gathering or news sharing arrangements and designed and conducted compliance programs for the ABC News staff, editors at Fairchild Publications and The Kansas City Star.
While at Cahill Gordon & Reindel (1979–89), she worked as a senior associate on major media cases, including Wayne Newton v. NBC, a libel action that involved a three-month jury trial, a verdict for the plaintiff that was later remitted by the trial judge and, ultimately, an appeal reversing the judgment in its totality; Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, which involved a bench trial resulting in a finding of infringement, reversal by the appellate court and a major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court defining the fair use doctrine under the Copyright Act of 1976; LaRouche v. NBC, a libel action tried to a jury in which the network not only defeated plaintiff's defamation claim, but successfully counterclaimed under a tortuous interference theory; and Rogal v. ABC, in which the jury returned a verdict for the defense in a libel/false light case in federal court in Philadelphia.