Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/270

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SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC. v. MEMBERS OF N. Y. STATE CRIME VICTIMS BD. Opinion of the Court

B Looking back from the safety of the Federal Witness Protection Program, Henry Hill recalled: “At the age of twelve my ambition was to be a gangster. To be a wiseguy. To me being a wiseguy was better than being president of the United States.” N. Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family 19 (1985) (hereinafter Wiseguy). Whatever one might think of Hill, at the very least it can be said that he realized his dreams. After a career spanning 25 years, Hill admitted engineering some of the most daring crimes of his day, including the 1978–1979 Boston College basketball pointshaving scandal, and the theft of $6 million from Lufthansa Airlines in 1978, the largest successful cash robbery in American history. Wiseguy 9. Most of Hill’s crimes were more banausic: He committed extortion, he imported and distributed narcotics, and he organized numerous robberies. Hill was arrested in 1980. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, he testified against many of his former colleagues. Since his arrest, he has lived under an assumed name in an unknown part of the country. In August 1981, Hill entered into a contract with author Nicholas Pileggi for the production of a book about Hill’s life. The following month, Hill and Pileggi signed a publishing agreement with Simon & Schuster, Inc. Under the agreement, Simon & Schuster agreed to make payments to both Hill and Pileggi. Over the next few years, according to Pileggi, he and Hill “talked at length virtually every single day, with not more than an occasional Sunday or holiday skipped. We spent more than three hundred hours together; my notes of conversations with Henry occupy more than six linear file feet.” App. 27. Because producing the book required such a substantial investment of time and effort, Hill sought compensation. Ibid. The result of Hill and Pileggi’s collaboration was Wiseguy, which was published in January 1986. The book depicts, in colorful detail, the day-to-day existence of organized crime,