Scott Rudin and Broadway Ad Agency SpotCo Reach Settlement in 2020 Lawsuit

A settlement has been reached in the legal battle between Broadway advertising agency SpotCo and producer Scott Rudin, according to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter.

SpotCo filed suit against the producer in August 2020, alleging that Rudin had failed to pay outstanding invoices for services rendered to several Broadway productions including recent revivals of West Side Story and The Music Man and Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

Despite nearly a decade of collaboration, the business arrangement between Rudin and the agency included no formal written contract, with Rudin's production company receiving retroactive invoices for ad placements for Rudin shows.

Rudin countersued the agency claiming that the agency could not verify how payments has been allocated throughout their working relationship and alleging that SpotCo had not paid third-party vendors with funds he had provided.

Earlier this month, a stipulation of discontinuance with prejudice was filed by the two parties with the New York State Supreme Court, dissolving the case permanently.

No details of a financial settlement have been made public.

Since the 2020 filing, numerous former Rudin employees have come forward, alleging decades of workplace abuses in an expose from The Hollywood Reporter causing the producer to step away from operations on his Broadway productions including The Book of Mormon and The Music Man.

Since his first Broadway producing credit for 1993's Face Value, Rudin has produced dozens of Broadway shows. He has won Tony Awards for The Ferryman, The Boys in the Band, Hello, Dolly!, The Humans, A View from the Bridge, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Skylight, A Raisin in the Sun, Death of a Salesman, The Book of Mormon, Fences, God of Carnage, The History Boys, Doubt, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Copenhagen, and Passion.