Making his return to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit nearly two years after abruptly retiring from the bench amid sexual harassment allegations, Alex Kozinski on Monday urged a Ninth Circuit panel to revive a copyright lawsuit against the filmmakers behind the Academy Award-winning movie “The Shape of Water.”

Kozinski contended that his client, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Zindel who claims that the film and its novelization infringe copyrighted elements of his father’s play “Let Me Hear You Whisper,” didn’t get a fair shake from a district court judge. U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson dismissed the case last year on a motion to dismiss without taking any evidence or holding oral argument.