News Article On Jr Mentions Sr

[Cheryl Harrell]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...celeb_eo/14427



Prinze Wants Payback

Thu Jul 1,12:15 PM ET

By Lia Haberman

Zoinks! Some bad business advice has cost Freddie Prinze Jr. big bucks, and now he wants payback.


• News: Gellar holds Grudge
• News: Prinze's MTV prom invite
• News: Triple the doo: Scooby 3 planned



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Sarah Michelle Gellar (news)'s main squeeze is suing his former manager for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and negligence, claiming funky financial advice cost the Scooby-Doo star "hundreds of thousands of dollars."


The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, asserts that manager Ric Beddingfield and his firm Beddingfield Co. Inc. pushed Prinze to hire Jesse Greenspan as an accountant and business manager, even though he wasn't actually a certified public accountant.


"He wasn't looking out for Freddie's best interests, he was looking out for his own interest and his friend's [Greenspan]. He had Freddie use this guy who wasn't qualified, he misrepresented his credentials and said he was CPA," asserts the actor's lawyer, Paul Sorrell.


On the say-so of Greenspan (no relative of Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan) and Beddingfield, Prinze went off to shoot Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed in Australia under his personal services loan-out corporation, Hunga Rican Inc., a "C corporation" under U.S. tax code.


(The corporation is named after a track on his father's 1975 comedy album Looking Good.)


That particular type of classification ended up costing Prinze "thousands of dollars in damages as a result of unnecessary payments of Australian taxes and U.S. alternative minimum taxes and the loss of use of foreign tax credits of over $200,000," adding up to more than $700,000 over the past four years.


In laymen's terms, the so-called money men messed up.


Prinze also claims that Beddingfield tried to sabotage his relationship with the Creative Artists Agency, intercepting phone calls between the actor and his agents.


(Oddly, the manager doesn't seem to be blamed for allowing Prinze to star as the Clearasil generation's poster boy in four successive stinkers: Down to You, Boys and Girls, Head Over Heels and Summer Catch.)


The 28-year-old seeks unspecified damages.

He may need the money, depending on how receptive audiences are to Scooby-Doo 3, due out in 2006. While the first live-action adaptation grossed $153 million in 2002, this year's sequel raked in only $83 million.


According to IMDb, Prinze also has some voice work on his upcoming credits list, including the 'toons Happily N'Ever After and Delgo, and is set to begin work on the indie drama Poolhall Prophets with Ving Rhames.


And if that doesn't work out, he can always count on his high-powered missus, with whom he joined forces in 2002.


Gellar's scheduled to star in a remake of the Japanese horror flick The Grudge this October.


She has also signed on to star in MGM's Romantic Comedy, a satire on several recent romantic comedies that revolves around a lovelorn guy who tries to win a girl's heart using movie-like tactics.


In addition, the erstwhile Buffy is lending her voice to two animated projects, 2004: A Light Knight's Odyssey and Happily N'Ever After opposite Prinze, and is scheduled to star in a musical comedy, Southland Tales, next year--keeping the couple's bank account well padded.