‘The Amazing Race’ Co-Creator Bertram Van Munster Sued For Fraud By Ex-CBS Exec

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: The co-creator of The Amazing Race could find himself in a mad dash for the courthouse due to a fraud lawsuit filed today.Ex-CBS and Warner Bros executive Leigh Collier is alleging that Bertram van Munster formed and then dissolved production company New Media Collective with her.That’s the most innocuous part.More ruinously, Collier is also claiming that the Emmy-winning producer went on to re-create the entity behind her back.

Quoting a New Media Collective press release’s boosts of having “closed over $62 million in production deals,” Collier is legally nettled, to say the least.“In or around 2014 PLAINTIFF pioneered the concept for a new media production company whereby a network of local, physical production companies would effectively be rolled-up under the auspices of a single entity to develop and create programming in local and often untapped markets for global use,” the former CBS TV VP, Programming & Development’s filing in L.A.

Superior Court states of what became her joint venture with van Munster in 2015 (read it here).For timeline purposes, Collier left CBS in May 2014 a.k.a over a year before getting into business with van Munster.Citing fraud, breach of oral contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and five other claims, the jury trial seeking complaint goes on to detail how the Amazing Race EP brought Douglas Vargas and ex-Big Brother executive Mark Dziak on as partners in 2016.The 12-page filing also goes on to illustrate that despite the claim that Collier “worked tirelessly to form the company, including but not limited to forming business strategies and looking for and retaining outside investment” for almost a year, Dziak in July 2016 told her that the rest of the newly minted New