Ex-Disney president 'a total failure'

DISNEY'S former president Michael Ovitz has been branded a 'total failure' by the company's former chief legal adviser.

In court testimony designed to protect his own actions but damning of Ovitz, Sanford Litvack said the former talent agent did not fit into the company.

'He was not guilty of gross negligence. He was not guilty of malfeasance,' Litvack said. 'He was guilty of not being able to do the job.'

Ovitz, chief executive Michael Eisner and several current or former directors are being sued in a bruising case in Delaware which has daily thrown up damaging evidence of the climate within the giant media group.

Shareholders brought the case after being infuriated by a $140m (£76m) severance package paid to Ovitz when he was dumped in 1996 after just 14 months.

But Litvack said incompetence was not enough reason for the company to get rid of Ovitz.

'If there was a way not to pay him, I would not have paid him,' Litvack said. 'I didn't like him and he didn't like me.'

Under the terms of his contract, Ovitz could only be fired if he committed gross negligence or malfeasance, which is central to the shareholders' claim that Eisner and the board should have taken more care with his contract when he joined the company in 1995.

Litvack said that he was never able to advise Eisner to sack Ovitz without cause because Ovitz never lied about any 'material' matter at the company. He said he and former chief financial officer Stephen Bollenbach had reservations about Ovitz from the time Eisner put up his name as a candidate.

Both Litvack and Bollenbach had never made any secret of their own ambitions to head the Disney group.

Litvack said Ovitz began to grate on other executives almost from the start and had troubled fitting in as a number two executive.

'This guy just was a square peg in a round hole,' Litvack told the court. 'It just didn't work.'

Litvack said he had tried to get Ovitz to leave of his own accord but he ignored the suggestion.

'He was a failure,' Litvack said. 'I think that was very, very hard for him to accept.'

He added: 'I don't he has accepted that to this day.'

Litvack's testimony backs up Eisner's statements before the trial when he said that the had fired Ovitz, a former top talent agent whose books included Janet Jackson and Tom Cruise, because failed to fit in as a corporate executive.

Ovitz earlier in the trial admitted that he had clashed with colleagues over his management style.