HBO 'Girls' Lena Dunham suing over book proposal leak

Lena Dunham is a hot commodity; the triple-threat writer/director/actor created 'Girls' for HBO which is gearing up for a second season after a wildly popular and successful first. To her credit, Dunham has parlayed that success into a book deal with Random House to the tune of $3.5 Million.

The Random House deal was based on a sixty-six page proposal for a self-described "funny book of advice and anecdotes on everything from sex to eating to traveling to work." Really, when your stock is as high as Dunham's is at the moment, you can basically promise to fill the pages with anything; it is your name and photo on the cover that is going to move books off the shelves.

But here's where this story takes a turn: the proposal for Dunham's book (entitled "Not That Kind of Girl") was leaked to the media and posted in its entirety on Gawker. This isn't unusual; the publishing industry has more leaks than a treehouse ceiling and it is quite common for proposals to hit the web. But Dunham isn't taking this lying down: Charles Harder of Wolf, Rifkin, Shapiro, Schulman & Rabkin demanded that Gawker take down the document and Gawker complied--partially.

What remains on the site is twelve quotations from the proposal and an editorial opinion that describes them as "indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal." Dunham isn't finished--she wants the quotations and the editorial removed, having employed her own legal team to sue to this end.

It is worth noting that HBO and Random House's respective legal teams are not involved in this suit--it is Dunham's personal representation moving forward. Gawker's latest response? "We're not removing the quotes [sic]."

It seems this is going to get uglier before it gets better.