The Walt Disney Company was awarded $1.6 million in attorney fees after facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over Moana (2016). The judge found that the animator who sued Disney lied and forged a document.

Lawsuit

We first reported on the lawsuit back in January 2025. Animator Buck Woodall claimed Disney stole ideas from his copyrighted screenplay Bucky for both animated Moana films. Within a few months, Disney had won the suit.

According to Courthouse News Service, Senior U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall agreed with Disney that Woodall had acted in “bad faith.”

Woodall first lied about when he had seen Moana in order to skirt the statute of limitations. He had originally tried to file the suit in 2020, but the court ultimately ruled in 2024 that it was too late. Woodall was able to keep his lawsuit alive by claiming he did not see the film until a few months after its 2017 DVD release, bolstered by the 2024 release of Moana 2.

However, Woodall said during his deposition that he saw Moana in the theater in December 2016.

Furthermore, Woodall forged a confidentiality agreement. The crux of Woodall’s case is that he showed his Bucky screenplay and presentation to Jenny Marchick in 2003. At the time, Marchick (the stepsister of Woodall’s brother’s wife) worked as the director of development for Mandeville Films, which had a first-look deal with Disney and offices on Disney property in Burbank.

The fake agreement was purportedly signed by Marchick in 2003 when Woodall showed her elements of Bucky. But when the case went to trial, Woodall admitted that before filing his lawsuit, he had put Marchick’s name on the agreement, which had originally been signed by a model. Woodall then backdated the document to October 22, 2003.

Judge Marshall wrote that the “plaintiff’s trade secrets claims were objectively specious and brought/maintained with subjective bad faith.”

The judge declined to award Disney an additional $3.9 million in attorney fees but, noting Woodall did not have much money to his name, awarded them $54,000. Marshall also fined Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage $476,000.

To avoid double recovery, Disney agreed that Woodall would only have to pay attorney fees that exceed the amount in sanctions they recover from Lage.

Marshall said the costs were “sufficient to deter plaintiff and others from bringing additional patently meritless or unreasonable copyright claims.”

For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.