{"id":981184,"date":"2026-08-05T00:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981184\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T00:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:31:14","slug":"caa-beats-terrence-howard-lawsuit-over-empire-salary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981184\/","title":{"rendered":"CAA Beats Terrence Howard Lawsuit Over ‘Empire’ Salary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCAA<\/a> won\u2019t have to face a lawsuit from Terrence Howard<\/a> accusing the agency of botching negotiations for his contract on Empire, a court has ruled.<\/p>\n

\n\tHoward in 2023 sued CAA, alleging his agents had a conflict of interest when they convinced him into taking below-market salaries for his six-season run starring in the series. The sweeping lawsuit targeted packaging fees, a lucrative commission paid to agencies for bundling key creative elements \u2014 like writers, directors and actors \u2014 into a single project.<\/p>\n

\n\tHoward\u2019s relationship with CAA started to sour in 2018, when it pushed to renegotiate the actor\u2019s contract for Empire, one of the most-watched shows on Fox during its run in which he played the lead character Lucious Lyon. His concerns weren\u2019t limited to his per-episode salary. He wanted profit participation, perks and promotional opportunities, among other things, along the lines of a Kevin Spacey for House of Cards or Jon Hamm for Mad Men, according to court documents. Fox rebuffed the ask, declining to reopen his deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose talks broke down again a year later after Howard asked to up his episodic fee from $325,000 to $750,000. Around this time, he was growing increasingly frustrated with CAA\u2019s handling of his deal. He alleged in the lawsuit that his agents didn\u2019t tell him of key developments that undermined his leverage or that CAA also represented series co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong and production company Imagine Entertainment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHad CAA disclosed those facts when they mattered, I would have sought independent advice separate from CAA, required corrected compensation information, insisted on a written demand to Fox, and reconsidered whether CAA should continue advising me regarding Empire,\u201d Howard wrote in a court declaration.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dismissal swung on the structure through which Howard was compensated for his appearance on Empire. Fox dealt with his loan-out company, Universal Bridges, which in turn gave the actor a fixed salary as an employee. The court found that any increase to his salary \u2014 even if it was successfully negotiated \u2014 wouldn\u2019t have necessarily translated into additional payments.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe alleged damages, the court stressed, are too speculative to greenlight the case for trial.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe immediate economic result of an increase in compensation would have been an increase in revenue to Universal Bridges only,\u201d wrote Los Angeles Superior Court judge Cherol Nellon in the ruling issued on July 31.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge added that CAA pushed to renegotiate Howard\u2019s deal but that Fox ultimately had the final say. Evidence that the agency should\u2019ve negotiated differently doesn\u2019t establish that the network would\u2019ve agreed to the terms, according to the ruling, which noted that Fox \u201crejected all attempts at renegotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCAA is gratified that the Court summarily dismissed Mr. Howard\u2019s case prior to trial,\u201d an agency spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cThis confirms CAA\u2019s position from the beginning: that the agency advocated for its client and always acted in good faith. As the Court\u2019s order makes clear, the uncontested evidence directly contradicted the very foundation of Mr. Howard\u2019s complaint by proving that CAA sought to renegotiate his\u00a0Empire\u00a0contract with Fox in 2018, and Fox refused.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHoward brought claims for breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud and fraudulent misrepresentation against CAA. Since filing the lawsuit in 2023, the Oscar-nominated actor has had a mixed run of appearances in mostly independent films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAA won\u2019t have to face a lawsuit from Terrence Howard accusing the agency of botching negotiations for his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":981185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[56905,185,171,270977,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-981184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-caa","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-terrence-howard","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117040086076711475","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/981185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}