JUSTICES SPURN BID TO TOSS OUT LAWSUIT IN FREE-SPEECH CASE.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

The Supreme Court refused on Monday to quash a lawsuit that blames the movie ``Natural Born Killers'' for leading a couple to shoot a woman during a robbery, triggering concern within the movie industry over creative freedom.

The Louisiana lawsuit, which now moves to the pretrial stage, accuses filmmaker Oliver Stone and others of intentionally inciting copycat crimes. They say the lawsuit threatens freedom of expression.

The court's action was not a ruling but merely a denial of review. Stone, Time Warner Entertainment Co., and others named in the lawsuit still can seek to have the case dismissed before it reaches a jury trial.

``We will continue to defend vigorously the constitutional rights of artists and directors to express their creative ideas without fear of liability,'' said John Schulman, general counsel for Time Warner, parent company for Warner Bros., which produced the movie. ``We are confident the courts will ultimately uphold those rights in this case.''

The Directors Guild of America shared the studio's disappointment that the Supreme Court didn't review the lawsuit's threat to creative freedom.

``The court's action will serve to stifle the voice of the creative community,'' said Jack Shea, president of the guild. ``But the DGA remains confident that the lawsuit itself will conclude by vindicating the First Amendment rights of artists.''

Stone and those named in the lawsuit should be confident given that ``the Supreme Court just has never come close to regulating free speech just because something bad might happen,'' said Michael Shapiro, a University of Southern California constitutional law professor and First Amendment scholar.

``To suppress films like that would be regulation based upon content. You may not think much of the idea, but it's an idea,'' he said.

Stone and the studio could face a bruising battle if the lawsuit goes to trial, Shapiro said.

``It's not going to be very nice to have to go to trial and have distraught survivors of people killed testifying about their loss. And then the producers will have to come back and say something cruel like we can't stop making films because some psycho might run amok.

``It will make the producers look bad and uncaring, wrapping themselves up in the First Amendment,'' he said.

The 1994 movie stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a couple who go on a violent crime spree and kill dozens of people.

Stone, Time Warner and others involved in making the film were sued by relatives of Patsy Byers, who was shot during a March 8, 1995, robbery of the Ponchatoula, La., convenience store where she worked. Byers was left a quadriplegic. She later died of cancer.

The family's lawyer, Joe Simpson of Amite, La., said Monday that proving Stone and the others intended to incite violence will be difficult. He said he plans to focus on a quote attributed to Stone in a 1996 interview regarding the movie: ``The most pacifistic people in the world said they came out of this movie and wanted to kill somebody.''

The lawsuit says Sarah Edmondson shot Byers while Benjamin Darrus waited outside the Louisiana store, and that the two were inspired to commit the crime by watching ``Natural Born Killers.''

A Louisiana judge dismissed the lawsuit, noting that many courts have ruled that the First Amendment bars such claims over copycat crimes.

But there have been exceptions. For example, the Supreme Court last April refused to free a publisher from a lawsuit over three 1993 killings in Maryland by a hit man who followed a book's advice on how to commit murder for hire.

Relatives of the victims accused Paladin Press of Boulder, Colo., which published ``Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors,'' of inciting the crime.

CAPTION(S):

photo

PHOTO Oliver Stone

``Natural Born Killers'' under fire