Comic book legend Stan Lee has become embroiled in yet another legal dispute stemming from his post Marvel activities.  Lee, attorney Arthur Lieberman, and POW! CEO Gil Champion are currently contending with a $3.6 million lawsuit filed in an obscure California county court by former associates who claim that their interests were injured when POW! Entertainment executed a reverse merger with Arturion Entertainment, which allowed POW! to become a publicly-traded company without going through the typically lengthy registration process.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Valerie Barth, who claims that she helped Lee with publicity matters (including securing his "star" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame), was the head of Arturion and Ron Sandman was a minority shareholder in the company that was used as a "shell" in order to allow POW! which merged with Arturion, to gain public traded status.  POW! Entertainment actually began this legal fracas by filing a suit accusing Barth and Sandman, who had begun publicly complaining that they had been abused in the Arturion deal, of fraud and abusive business practices.

Then Barth and Sandman filed a countersuit claiming that Lee had inflated the worth of POW!'s assets at the time of the merger with Arturion, and downplayed his legal imbroglio with his former post-Marvel company, Stan Lee Media.  According to the counter-complaint Lee’s legal troubles made the financing of POW! Entertainment difficult and injured the interests of Arturion stockholders, and that POW! is "a mere shell without aedequate, sufficient or reasonable assets or capital with which to carry on the business in which it is engaged."

Barth and Sandman’s counter-suit also claims that POW! was involved in numerous securities violations and seeks $3.6 million in compensatory damages along with the removal of Pow! Entertainment’s board of directors.

In spite of winning every battle in the lingering litigation, Lee is still involved in a convoluted lawsuit from his first post-Marvel entrepreneurial effort, Stan Lee Media, which was run by the unsavory Peter Paul.  The latest ruling in this long-running case, which recalls that interminable Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit from Dicken’s Bleak House, came in March (see "Stan Lee Media Loses Another Round").