What's he gonna do? Sue the entire country for discrimination? Sue the goddamn universe itself for reality not being the way he wants it?
Funny stuff, worth a watch, but for those who can't spare 10 minutes: Hollywood uses market research to work out what kind of film would best appeal to the American public, produces "Coupon: The Movie" which flops since it's as bad as it sounds, then sues all of America for "misleading" them. They win. They then force every American citizen -- by court order -- to buy a ticket and watch the film in a movie theater at least once. The movie's trailers and promos (in all formats) are immediately updated to incorporate the court order.
He can't get on the show through arbitration? Is that because the arbitrator doesn't have those kinds of powers?
He explicitly agreed in writing that his only remedy after a dispute would be monetary, plus I can't really recall any situation in the past when someone successfully sued to
force a competition production (reality shows, game shows, AGT/American Idol, etc.) to allow them to participate, much less "skip the line" to advance to later rounds without actually winning previous rounds.
I'm not sure how you could even make that work. Absolutely
everyone would be outraged -- it's not even remotely fair to legitimate competitors, it completely removes all credibility and sense of fairness, and the show runners and judges will feel compromised and compelled to give better scores to the litigant than they otherwise would.
It'd be like suing the producers of The Price is Right for not calling you up from the audience and demanding the court order them to not only put you on the show but also move you directly to the final round and award you the grand prize along with everything you'd have won had you earned it "the hard way." Besides the contestants, producers, cast, techs, etc. hating your guts, it would completely fuck up the format of the show -- the entire second half would have to be cut out because instead of running 3 more game rounds and another wheel spin to select the second contestant for the final round, they're stuck with you. And of course it fucks the other guy who made it to the final round out of a potential win.
Why anybody would ever actually
do that even if they could is beyond me. You can't just muscle and cheat your way into a competition and expect fair treatment. Everybody involved is going to be looking for ways to fuck you over as hard as possible without being obvious about it at every step of the competition you bother with. They've already been forced to "rig the game" just to squeeze you in, so what's a little more rigging to make sure you don't win?
Besides, I think there's relevant legislation prohibiting this anyway. After the quiz show scandals of the 1950's, Congress revised the Communications Act to explicitly forbid
"prearranging or predetermining in whole or in part the outcome of a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance." It's not much of a stretch to call AGT a contest of "intellectual skill," since obviously there's more to music than just banging a drum, strumming strings or yelling into a microphone. You can also argue it's also got an element of chance to it since the audience (fickle beast that it is) also has informal influence.
Generally speaking a court doesn't have the authority to order someone to break the law. Those local judges who give "clever" sentences for low-level crimes, like holding a sign on a street corner that reads "I am a thief" are allowed to do that (within reason) but they can't order a defendant to do it naked since that would violate public nudity/indecency laws and their human rights.
