Misha and the Wolves

I watched Misha and the Wolves on Netflix over the weekend. I had not known this story. From the mid-'90s to 2008, Misha Defonseca told the world that she was  a Belgian-born Jew hidden with a Catholic family (and given a name change) when her parents were deported and that beginning in 1941 (at the age of 7) she walked across Germany and into Poland looking for her parents, killed a German soldier, escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto, and hid in the woods, taken care of by a pack of wolves. The story unraveled in 2008 when multiple investigations revealed that the story, including Defonseca's identity, were fabricated.

According to the movie, Defonseca's story fell apart following a falling out with the small publisher, Mt. Ivy Press, owned by Jill Daniel, that published the book (which did not sell in the U.S.) and sold overseas rights (where it was a huge bestseller in Europe, spawning a French-language film adaptation). Defonseca won a $ 22.5 million judgment against Daniel. Trying to figure out how to challenge that judgment, Daniel stumbled across a document that caused her to question Defonseca's story; she brought in outside experts to investigate and eventually get to the truth. In 2008, Defonseca acknowledged that she fabricated the story. Daniel successfully sued for vacatur of the Defonseca judgment.

The movie does a poor job covering the litigation. This is unsurprising. The movie is about Defonseca's story, not the litigation, so the details of what happened in court are unimportant, other than the outcome and how Daniel responded to the outcome. The film's theme is "Defonseca conned Daniel, then Daniel exposed the lies because she was looking to get out from under an unjust judgment." Defonseca's lawyer hints at serious wrongdoing. Daniel's description of the trial suggests the jury was swayed by the heartbreaking (and false) testimony of a purported Holocaust victim and Daniel was perceived as the monster who ripped her off despite having extensive records of making payments.

Three cases with several written opinions arose from this mess: 1) Trial and appellate opinions in the underlying royalties dispute; 2) two appellate opinions from Daniel's lawsuit to vacate the prior judgment; and 3) Daniel's bankruptcy proceeding. Reading through the published opinions offers a different story that is relevant to how we view Daniel and the entire thing. A more accurate and detailed discussion of the litigation might have produced a movie with a different tone.

First, the original dispute was not between Defonseca and Daniel/Mt. Ivy. Daniel brought in her then-friend Vera Lee to work with Defonseca (who is neither a writer nor a native English speaker), then pushed Lee off the book. Lee initiated the original litigation naming Mt. Ivy, Daniel, and Defonseca as defendants, as well as the company Daniel hired to sell the book in Europe. Lee won an $ 11 million+ judgment that stands--the court in the second action declined to vacate that judgment and the bankruptcy court in 2017 denied discharge. Lee receives little or no mention in the film, even though Daniel's fallout with Lee, not Defonseca, precipitated the proceedings that precipitated the unraveling of Defonseca's lies. Also, Defonseca's $ 22 million+ judgment  against Daniel and Mt. Ivy came on a cross claim, not an original dispute between Defonseca against Daniel. Civ Pro remains your friend.

Second, the state trial court described "the totality of the defendants' conduct as having been infused with a high enough level of rascality to have raised an eyebrow, even to those inured to the 'rough and tumble' of the marketplace." The findings of wrongdoing in the trial court opinion and the first court of appeals opinion are detailed. They include undisclosed side contracts, unmet promises about capacity, self-dealing, an offshore foreign subsidiary to which rights were assigned, agents exceeding the scope of their authority, and ceasing domestic marketing efforts within a few months of publication. The film makes a lot of Daniel's efforts to get the book into Oprah's book club; in the film, Daniel says Defonseca refused to go on Oprah when invited, while the court of appeals says Daniel canceled. Anyway, this sounds like more than  "Defonseca played to the jury's sympathies and the jury ignored all the evidence because I looked like a monster."

On a side note, the Oprah-appearnace-that-never-was gets a lot of play in the film. The show recorded a segment (which never aired, of course) of Defonseca at a nearby wolf preserve, and the movie spends a lot of time with the wolf-expert/owner of the preserve. The owner makes much of Defonseca's rapport with the wolves during that segment, I guess to suggest they had found one of their own, thereby verifying her story. Daniel expresses disbelief that Defonseca refsued to go on Oprah when it could have meant millions in sales. The suggestion is that this refusal undercut Daniel's marketing efforts and was a first red flag--Defonseca canceled because she knew the story could not stand up to scrutiny and did not want to expose herself to Oprah's withering interrogation. The latter point is belied by Defonseca making TV appearances in Europe, including to promote the film adaptation.

Third, in the opinion affirming vacatur of Defonseca's judgment, the court of appeals concluded:

This case has had a legal life of over fifteen years; All involved have been bloodied. Defonseca's story has been shown to be false. As for Daniel, she also has been shown to have acted highly inappropriately, as evidenced by the still valid multimillion dollar judgment against her in favor of Vera Lee, the one least blameworthy person in the entire affair. Hopefully the saga has now come to an end.

Again, this is a different message than what the film presents.

Finally, one film review questioned the motives of various actors in this drama. It argues that Defonseca's motives remain unknown but that Daniel was motivated by greed and a desire for publicity. From the movie alone, this criticism makes no sense. Daniel is a book publisher--her job is to find good stories, help tell them to the world, publicize them, and make money. Daniel did just that, or at least tried. The film mentions but downplays two things that give the greed point more resonance: the underlying business relationship before the fraud was exposed as found by the courts and Daniel's failure to investigate pre-publication suggestions that Defonseca's story did not seem credible. The film mentions the latter a few times in passing, but does not emphasize it in the way it comes out in the opinions.