Shia LaBeouf Facing Possible Legal Action for Plagiarism

Posted on December 27, 2013

Publisher's Weekly reports that actor and writer Shia LaBeouf is facing legal action from multiple parties after his admission on Twitter that he plagiarized the dialogue, characters and plot of a Daniel Clowes comic, Justin M. Damiano, for use in his 2012 short film HowardCantour.com. Clowes is the creator of Ghost World and did not give permission for his work to be used.

Wired reports that when the film was posted online, Clowes fans immediately picked up on the plagiarism. Shia then tweeted various apologies for failing to credit Clowes, but it later turned out that he had plagiarized his apologies, as well. But it gets weirder: there are now allegations that he's plagiarized pretty much everything he's put out for years.

PW reports that Brooklyn publisher Melville House may be suing LaBeouf for stealing entire sections of author Benoit Duteurtre's novel The Little Girl and the Cigarette which LaBeouf used in a series of mini-comics. We hope that Shia has been saving his checks from those Transformers movies. He's going to need them to fund all the upcoming legal settlements.