The Patterson files, part I: the lawsuit details emerge

As I said last week,  I’m getting the peanuts ready for opening arguments in the civil trial of Christina Sharp vs. her ex-lover James Patterson. Yesterday, the New York Daily News printed a lengthy piece explaining the grounds, the rebuttals, and even giving examples of possible infringement and plagiarism:

Sharp says Patterson asked for her help in developing the romantic scenes and promised her a book dedication.

In a September 1996 letter to Patterson, she wrote:

"With graceful moonlit choreography, he rocked her back and forth, then
forward, to and from then forward, forward, forward – a sensuous
cha-cha-cha to the window."

On page 185 of "Cat & Mouse," he wrote:

"We slowly rocked back and forth, back and forth, a sensuous cha-cha-cha next to the broad picture window."

Sharp says she didn’t ask for compensation because she believed she would share in the profits when they married.

Patterson’s lawyer says Sharp’s just fishing for a payout. "[Sharp] is
trying to acquire in this court what she failed to acquire seven years
ago through Mr. Patterson’s affections," attorney Gerard Harper wrote.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if the grounds are valid–and it does certainly look like Patterson, or whoever was actually writing his books that week, did some pilfering–then that’s fine, but couldn’t Sharp have written some better lines? I mean, talk about purple…