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The trial is the culmination of years of litigation over the
report on "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," which first aired in
September 2008.
The report accused British sporting goods company Mitre Sports
International of turning a blind eye to the use by contractors
or subcontractors of underaged workers for the production of
Mitre-branded soccer balls in India.
Mitre denies the charges and says it opposes child labor.
In his opening statements Lloyd Constantine, a lawyer for Mitre,
said the evidence would show that children depicted in the
report as stitching Mitre soccer balls for 5 cents per hour or
less were induced to pretend on camera that they were child
laborers.
"These poor kids are just characters," Constantine said, after
jurors watched the 22-minute report.
Gumbel's Real Sports program "is supposed to report real news,
not fiction," Constantine told the jury, as he went over
segments of the report that he described as "concocted" or
"flat-out lies."
"These scenes were all staged and HBO is very good at that. They
make good movies," Constantine said.
Mitre, which is owned by the London-based Pentland Group, has
called the report a “hoax” and a “hatchet job,” aimed at
tarnishing the reputation of a company at the forefront of
global efforts to eradicate child labor.
Home Box Office Inc says it stands by the report, alternately
titled “Childhood Lost” and “Children of Industry.” Ray
Stallone, a spokesman for the Time Warner Inc subsidiary, has
repeatedly dismissed the libel case as “without merit” and said
none of the report's video footage was fabricated.
The premium channel is better known for entertainment than news.
But HBO also has a reputation for producing top-notch news
documentaries and that reputation could take a hit if it is
found guilty of "staging" any part of a news report.
Lawyers have declined to detail the damages Mitre is seeking.
But the company’s lawsuit, filed on Oct. 23, 2008, said the
amount would total “tens of millions of dollars."
U.S. District Judge George Daniels said during jury selection
early on Monday that the trial was expected to take up to four
weeks.
The case is Mitre Sports International Limited v. Home Box
Office Inc in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New
York, No. 08-09117.
(Editing by Dan Grebler, Andrew Hay and Lisa Shumaker)
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