Emma Cline's ex-boyfriend's copyright claim dismissed
Chaz Reetz-Laiolo had alleged that her bestselling debut novel The Girls stole from his writings
A California judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by author Emma Cline’s ex-boyfriend alleging that Cline’s bestselling debut novel, The Girls, stole from his own writings and infringed his copyright.
Cline’s former partner Chaz Reetz-Laiolo’s suit, filed last November, claimed that she used spyware installed on a computer she sold him to steal from the screenplays he was writing. A countersuit from Cline acknowledged that while she had used spyware to keep track of Reetz-Laiolo during their relationship, she lost access to the software once she sold him the computer. Calling the theory that she stole unpublished work from his computer “ludicrous”, she said that her “abusive ex-boyfriend” was trying “to extract millions of dollars by intimidation and threat, all under the auspices of frivolous claims of copyright infringement”.
Related: Emma Cline’s plagiarism suit – just another story of a man acting terribly
