Control over Marvel emails is being litigated in a case spanning courts in New York and Florida involving Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter, according to an Andrew Ross Sorkin story in the New York Times.  The emails were requested as part of discovery in a bitter dispute between Perlmutter and a Palm Beach neighbor that started over the neighborhood tennis pro, an employee of the neighborhood association.  Perlmutter liked her, his neighbor Harold Peerenboom objected to the process by which she was hired, and years of litigation resulted. 

Some Marvel emails were turned over the Peerenboom’s attorneys in response to the discovery request, but Peerenboom’s attorney said that there should be many more, and that Perlmutter was asserting “attorney-client privilege over hundreds of additional responsive emails – even though he claimed to have no control over the Marvel emails in the first place.”  Peerenboom’s attorneys are also asking the court to order Marvel to search its servers for emails related to an incident involving anonymous hate letters sent to neighbors and business associates of Peerenboom.

Perlmutter’s attorneys, of course, deny all of Peerenboom’s allegations and argue that Peerenboom is a serial litigator. 

This is the second recent appearance in the public eye for the notoriously reclusive Perlmutter, who has not been photographed in over 30 years.  Perlmutter also drew attention in January for donating $1 million to the event Donald Trump staged in Iowa on the night of a Fox News candidate debate, which Trump was boycotting.  The Trump event was to benefit U.S. military veterans, but the association with Trump was enough to make the contribution controversial, and to draw attention to Marvel in a negative way.

While both of these events are from Perlmutter’s personal life, as the email dispute demonstrates, such issues have a way of bleeding over into the business.  And as the Trump issue shows, the actions of a company executive can be associated with the company even when there’s no connection.