Hollywood industry lawyers in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s took the position that an exclusive personal services contract should be treated as suspended during the periods when the artist was not actually working. Since no artist could be working every single day (that is, including holidays and weekends), this interpretation meant that two, or later seven, years of
actual service would be spread over a much longer
calendar period, thus extending the time during which the
studio system had complete control of a young artist's career. In response, actress
Olivia de Havilland, backed by the
Screen Actors Guild, filed a lawsuit on August 23, 1943, against
Warner Bros. De Havilland was fed up with being
typecast by Warners as an
ingénue and strongly preferred the other kinds of roles she had been given when she had been able to convince the studio to loan her out to other studios. The lawsuit resulted in a landmark decision of the
California Court of Appeal for the Second District in de Havilland's favor on December 8, 1944. In a unanimous opinion signed by Justice Clement Lawrence Shinn, the three-justice panel adopted the
common sense view that seven years from the commencement of service means seven
calendar years. Although
Jack Warner tried to discourage other studios from hiring her, she eventually found work with
Paramount Pictures, where she won her first
Best Actress Oscar for
To Each His Own (1946). While today's film and TV actors have enjoyed the higher compensation and greater creative freedom intended by Section 2855, music artists have not.
Jared Leto and
Shannon Leto of the band
Thirty Seconds to Mars credit the De Havilland law with resolving their music contract issue in 2009, which sets a precedent for music artists and Section 2855. In 2015, British singer
Rita Ora also cited the De Havilland Law in her complaint while seeking release from her American label. They eventually reached a settlement. ==Notable applications==