Ben Stein Sues After Japanese Company Fired Him for Religious Beliefs
Ben Stein, the actor whose monotone voice called on Bueller repeatedly in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” is suing a Japanese electronics firm for firing him.
Stein claims he was replaced by the U.S. section of Japan’s Kyocera Corp. when he expressed his views on global warming. The actor and economist filed a complaint with a Los Angeles court on Wednesday, which stated that he would sue the Kyocera printer business for $300,000.
In the legal complaint obtained by The Wrap, Stein said Kyocera and advertising company Seiter & Miller’s representative Grace Jao approached Stein’s agent in December 2010 about a deal to appear in the company’s commercials and at an event. According to the complaint, the deal was close to finished and only needed small details to be confirmed.
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“The only points still under discussion- but not in dispute- were what kind of tea and other snacks [Stein] would have on the set," the complaint stated. "There were no outstanding deal points."
However, the actor stated that the printer-making portion of the company, Kyocera Mita, questioned whether his views on global warming were in line with theirs.
He claimed that they questioned whether his stance on the global environmental issue were “sufficiently conventional and politically correct for Kyocera.”
Stein’s response to the question was that global warming was a divine occurrence. The actor told his agent to respond to the company by saying, “as a matter of religious belief, he believed that God, and not man, controlled the weather.”
The actor’s agent, Marcia Hurwitz, was told that "questions had been raised by defendant Kyocera about whether [Stein's] views on global warming and on the environment were sufficiently conventional and politically correct for Kyocera," the suit stated.
After the company decided to move on from Stein, they hired an “astonishingly brazen misappropriation of [Stein's] persona.”
According to the lawsuit, “[they] dressed him up as Stein often appeared in commercials (bow tie, glasses, sports jacket)."
Now Stein is demanding $300,000 from the company, which would amount to payment for the work he originally was supposed to do for the company, court fees and other damages.
