'Hawaii Five-O' lawsuit settled

George Litto, the talent agent who represented the creator of the original 'Hawaii Five-O,' has lost a lawsuit he filed against CBS involving its reboot of the program.

Litto believed that he was due financial considerations from the new version of the program due to his work with Leonard Freeman, who created the original. Litto made an agreement with CBS that led to the reboot being launched in 2010, but something changed and he filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages.

A judge ruled that CBS did nothing wrong and ruled that Litto could not refile the lawsuit. 

CBS said that “We appreciate the court’s ruling and are pleased that it brings an appropriate conclusion to our involvement in this lawsuit.”

In 1996, Litto and Freeman's widow, Rose, agreed to work together to "jointly exploit and equally share revenues" from future versions of the program. Two years later, an arbitrator gave the rights to movies, stage plays and merchandising of the program to Freeman's heirs.

CBS still had the rights for a TV reboot, however. When they decided to go ahead with it, they cut a deal with Freeman's heirs for better financial terms, which led to Litto's company, George Litto Productions, suing the Freeman family, saying they backdoored him out of the deal. 

"Although Plaintiff has sufficiently pled that the Company rather than the Trusts possessed the right to exploit the underlying rights to Hawaii Five-O...it would be inequitable to rescind the 2010 Amendment," wrote Judge Gregory W. Alarcon in the ruling.