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Issue date: 7/20/05 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: africamaat.com Sophia Stewart

The copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Sophia Stewart on April 24, 2003 against the Warchowski Brothers, Warner Bros. and others came to an end in the courtroom of the Honorable Margaret M Morrow, federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on June 14, 2005. The lawsuit alleged that the movies "The Matrix," and its two sequels, and "The Terminator," and its two sequels were all based on Stewart's novella entitled "The Third Eye."

Stewart's claims against all the defendants were summarily dismissed by Judge Morrow because she and her attorneys had failed, over the two year period since the case was filed, to respond in a timely manner to the court's schedule for management of the case.

The facts of the case were not heard at all in the proceedings that led to the dismissal. Rather, the court based its decision for dismissal on the fact that Stewart and her attorneys "had not been diligent either in pursuing or in responding to discovery. Despite the fact that the action had been on file for almost two years, she made no effort to propound any discovery to defendants until the fact discovery cut-off date set by the court. Nor did she respond in timely fashion to discovery propounded by defendants. This was consistent with the overall manner in which plaintiff has prosecuted the action, missing deadlines, seeking extensions, and generally ignoring the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures and court orders."

With the dismissal, Stewart's claim that she is the "Mother of the Matrix" and the creator of the ideas and characters upon which that movie series, as well as the "Terminator" series were based, appears to have died without ever having been heard in an open courtroom forum.

Whether or not she could have substantiated her allegations that "The Third Eye" was in fact the original creative concept behind the multi-billion dollar group of films will probably never be known since Stewart's attorney's did not prove the allegations through the court process.

The fortune in damage awards that Stewart might have been able to secure, had her claims been documented to the court's satisfaction, has vanished in the face of the court's ruling regarding her conduct and that of her attorneys in the case. She is now left with nothing but the expenses she has incurred in her pursuit of the matter plus the costs and attorneys fees of the defendants which were awarded to them by the court as a result of what it deemed Stewart's failure to reasonably follow the legal procedure set in motion when she first filed her claim

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