Two Missouri men sue FOX with claim network stole TV show idea

Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Oct 24, 2006 by Charles Emerick

Two Missouri men claim it is not a coincidence that the television show Prison Break closely resembles their lives.

Brothers Donald and Robert Hughes filed a federal lawsuit last week in Kansas City alleging that FOX Broadcasting Co. and Prison Break executive producer Paul Scheuring ripped off the idea for the show from a manuscript they wrote about their lives.

James Schottel, attorney for the Hughes brothers, said Monday that his clients wanted to be fairly compensated.

"There's far too many coincidences," Schottel said about the show and the 100-plus page manuscript Echoes from Clay County, the Legend of Don and Bob Hughes. "When you read through the manuscript, there are several, several similarities."

FOX, which has until mid-December to respond to the complaint, has not seen the lawsuit and would not comment, a company spokesman said.

According to their lawsuit, the Hugheses, of Versailles, finished the manuscript in 2001 and hired New York-based literary agent Jennifer DeChiara on Oct. 1 that year. DeChiara did not return a message seeking comment.

The manuscript details the lives led by the brothers beginning in 1964. That year, 16-year-old Robert was committed to a mental hospital in St. Joseph for allegedly threatening his mother with an ice pick.

Though his mother later admitted the threat never happened, Robert was then transferred to a state school for boys in Boonville. According to the story, Robert witnessed brutal beatings by a guard at the institution.

Donald Hughes, who was living in Jacksonville, Fla., at the time, hitchhiked to Boonville that summer.

Donald had studied the layout of the facility and used the knowledge to help his brother escape on July 9, 1964. The brothers then spent the next two years on the run.

Robert and Donald Hughes were never prosecuted for the escape, which received some publicity from local newspapers.

In December 2001, the lawsuit claims, DeChiara submitted the Hugheses' manuscript to FOX as an idea for a possible television series. According to Schottel, of St. Louis, the company told DeChiara that it was not interested.

Prison Break, a show about a man who works to break his innocent brother out of prison, premiered nearly four years later in fall 2005 on FOX.

"They just about fell off the couch the first time they saw the show," Schottel said. "It was like watching themselves on TV."

There is an "uncanny likeness" between the brothers' story and the show, according to the lawsuit. The Hugheses state the similarities include:

* An innocent man was sent to prison.

* The imprisoned man was aided in his escape by his brother.

* The manuscript and the show each have a character named D.B. Cooper.

* Both have abusive prison guards.

* No one had ever escaped from the institution in the manuscript or from the one in Prison Break.

"How many brothers have broken another brother out of prison?" Schottel said. "Their story was well-documented."

Schottel, who sustained a spinal cord injury in 1991 that left him without the use of his legs, was successful in a 2005 lawsuit against NBC's The Apprentice. He didn't seek monetary damages but got Donald Trump's show to change language that violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Schottel said it was difficult to put a number on the amount owed to the Hughes brothers.

"They want to be fairly compensated," Schottel said. "They feel it's their work."