John Steinbeck, winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”
In a nearly half-centurylong legal dispute over the rights to John Steinbeck’s works, an appellate court affirmed a district court’s $5 million compensatory damages award against the author’s daughter-in-law but vacated punitive damages against the heir.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday told Steinbeck’s family to stop making the same arguments in court over the enforceability of a 1983 agreement that designated family member’s controlling rights to Steinbeck’s books, which have been contested ever since his 1968 death.
