Vanessa Hudgens Sued for Legal Fees

Friday, September 21, 2007

Things are getting a tad rough lately for Vanessa Hudgens. First there were photos of her floating around on the Internet of her nakedness, at the age of 18 no less. Now, the ‘High School Musical’ star is being sued for breach of contract by her former lawyer who says that Vanessa owes him an unpaid $150,000 bill.

The complaint was filed September 18 in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawyer, Brian L. Schall said Hudgens has made more than $5 million from her songwriting and recording deals and that he helped in the negotiations for her as far back as October 2005, according to E! News.

Schall also is claiming unjust enrichment in that he advanced costs and expenses to Hudgens while working on her behalf. Hudgens contracted with the lawyer to pay him five percent of her gross earnings from the deals he negotiated for her and to continue payments until a year after their lawyer-client relationship had ended. Schall did say Hudgens has paid him some money, but not all.

The future of Hudgens’s recording career and her relationship with Disney, who owns High School Musical in which she stars is unknown at the moment. She has been keeping a low profile since the nudity thing and may be able to fall back on the fact that she has starred in cable television’s two most successful shows ever.

High School Musical has been seen by more than 250 million people around the world and HSM2’s premiere brought in 17.2 million viewers.  This made it the most-watched cable telecast of all time, and helped land Hudgens at number seven on Forbes’ list of top earners under the age of 21 with $2 million. Forbes’ recently came out with the list of all time money makers with Microsoft’s Bill Gates at the top.

Vanessa Hudgens also appeared on two soundtrack albums and toured the HSM cast. She has inked a deal with Hollywood Records and released her own album, V, last September.