It's been months since the bestseller book, Fifty Shades of Grey, hit the movies. But despite this, it's still making the rounds on the internet. This time, however, it doesn't seem like good news for the book; at least for its Australian publisher, Amanda Hayward.
A county district judge in Texas, Judge Susan McCoy, has just ordered Hayward to pay a schoolteacher named Jennifer Pedroza. According to the order signed by the judge, Hayward had to pay Pedroza an amount of $10,634.587 in royalties, as well as a pre-judgment interest of $888,643. This amount was accrued since Pedroza started suing Hayward in May 2014. According to Star Telegram, this amount could even reach $11.5 million.
In February 2015, a judge found Hayward to have defrauded Pedroza, who was then one of her business partners. According to the judge's findings, it was clear that Hayward had defrauded Pedroza to make sure that her profits were cut off from the bestselling book. This was because when the partners signed a contract with the Random House in 2012, Pedroza only received a one-time payment of $100,000. She was not made aware of the full terms of the transaction between Hayward and the company. Without her knowledge, the book had made at least $40 million for the partners.
Pedroza is not the only one who Hayward defrauded. As a matter of fact, there were allegedly four women partners that set up the e-publishing business which released the original Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011, as well as its sequels. The business was named as "The Writer's Coffee Shop" and was set up a couple of years before E.L. James' book was published.
Apart from paying $11.5 million to Pedroza, Hayward was ordered by the judge to pay the legal fees, which amounted to another $1.7 million. When asked how she felt about the order, Pedroza released a statement that she and her family feel "relieved and vindicated."
