Atlanta resident and veteran actor Daniel Baldwin has filed a lawsuit against financiers of 2023 film “A Walking Miracle,” saying the defendants failed to transfer ownership of the movie after completion as agreed upon in an oral contract.
Baldwin was hired to direct and act in the movie, which was shot in Atlanta in the fall of 2022 and featured his brothers Billy and Stephen as well as Denise Richards, Dina Myer, Dean Cain and Mickey Rourke. The defendants are Joseph Lipsey III and Puente Investments, both attached to the same Sandy Springs address, who committed $4.5 million to make the movie.
The lawsuit, filed in Fulton County superior court on March 25, said Baldwin “has suffered and will continue to suffer harm to his reputation and interests as a result of defendants’ breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentations.”
The movie, according to an IMDb description, tells the story of the recovery of a young man after a car crash left him in a coma.
Baldwin, in the lawsuit, said he provided “concessions” to ensure the film would happen in exchange for future ownership. Among the concessions, in what he described as a “valid and enforceable oral contract”: hiring Lipsey’s daughter Louise as a lead character, providing her acting coaching since she had little acting experience, featuring Lipsey’s son Joseph IV’s marketing agency in the movie and “facilitating a professional intervention for defendant Lipsey’s wife to address her addiction issues.”
In the lawsuit, Baldwin noted he has been sober since 2006 and considers himself an expert in the field of addiction recovery.
In exchange for these “concessions,” Baldwin said Lipsey promised he’d transfer ownership of the film to him once completed, which he did not do. As part of the deal, the lawsuit said, Lipsey promised $1 million to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research non-profit organization created by Baldwin’s mother, a breast cancer survivor who died in 2022, but that he only donated half the amount.
Baldwin said he “expended significant time, effort and resources in good faith to satisfy the obligations.”
The lawsuit said Lipsey “openly and regularly consumed cocaine and ketamine on a daily basis, creating a hazardous and unsafe work environment fully aware that plaintiff maintained a sober lifestyle.”
Baldwin also said Lipsey’s “inappropriate behavior” featured “offensive comments, disturbing personal stories and unwanted physical contact.” One example he noted was when Lipsey stuffed “a large sex object into his pants and proceeded to walk around set, making contact with actors’ bodies in a crude and humiliating manner.”
Baldwin’s publicists have not responded to emails for additional comment. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reached out to Lipsey via a phone and email address attached to his name but has not gotten a response.
Baldwin is seeking unspecified damages for “breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentations” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
There is no evidence the movie was ever released.
Baldwin, 64, has been an actor since the late 1980s, with credits including NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” and films like “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” “Mulholland Falls” and “Grey Gardens.”
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