The 5 Weirdest Lawsuits About Authors Stealing Ideas

In a lawsuit filed September 14, a former Swarthmore College baseball player named Charles Green accused Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding, of stealing significant plot points from Green's unpublished autobiographical novel, Bucky's 9th. "The two baseball novels bear a substantial similarity that could occur only as a result of Harbach's access to a version (or versions) of Bucky's and his large-scale misappropriation of Green's creative efforts," the suit claims. Among the "uncanny" parallels cited: Both are baseball stories. Both concern, specifically, the baseball teams of Division III liberal arts colleges. Both involve a baseball prodigy coming of age, and incorporate a "Recruiter-Mentor Plot" and an "Illicit-Romance Plot." Both feature an estrangement between a father and his adult child. Also, both have a "climactic beaning scene."