The lawyers always win

That old truism about lawyers being the only winners in lawsuits seems to have come true for poor old thriller writer Clive Cussler. Action-man Clive thought he’d suffered enough after losing a long-running series of court cases against the film studio that made the spectacularly unsuccessful film based on his novel Sahara, paying out US$5 million in damages. But now he has been ordered to pay the winners’ lawyers’ bills as well at $US14 million! Once he pays his own legal team, estimates are that he may be US$27 million out of pocket.