Crazy Contract Riders and the Celebrities Who Love Them

By Elspeth Crawford

Recently, pop star Britney Spears began her new gig as a judge on Fox’s “The X Factor,” where she helped coach potential pop stars to singing super-stardom. However, much of the press covering her debut surrounded a quirky rider to her employment contract, which reportedly demandedthat her dressing room be stocked with 10 bags of Doritos, 12 Snickers bars, 10 pieces of fried chicken, and 34 designer dresses. It seems extreme, but this is far from the first time a celebrity or other public figure has made an odd request in their contract. Here’s a collection of some of the more interesting ones.

1. Washington Nationals outfielder Jayson Werth isn’t the only professional baseball player to get attached to his uniform number, but he is one of the first to contractually require his team to give it to him. Back when Werth debuted with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2002, he wore the number 13, a bad omen if there ever was one. He switched over to 28 when he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, and he’s kept it through several more trades. When asked why he’s so insistent on wearing that particular number, Werth responded that ever since he took up the number his teams have gone on to play in the postseason five times. It would seem that Jason Werth has found his lucky number and is keeping it as long as the law of contracts will let him.
   
   
2. Bill Cosby was born in Philadelphia, PA, but he showed little in the way of brotherly love toward his hometown city when he returned to give comedy shows in 2004 and 2005. His contract rider forbid promoters from advertising his shows in many popular local papers, including the Philadelphia Enquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, and even the Boston Globe. It’s anyone’s guess as to why Cosby cut off his own advertising pipeline, but it’s possible that the comedian was still steamed over those periodicals’ coverage of his alleged sexual assault lawsuit, which has since been settled. Cosby’s rider also includes clauses of a (very slightly) more mundane character, including requirements for “high quality” toilet paper, presidential suite accommodations, and a specialty Starbucks latte whenever he asks for it.
   
   
3. Like many public figures, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and recent Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich takes on plenty of public speaking engagements. In addition to his 50-thousand dollar fee, Gingrich’s rider for such occasions has a few particular requests. Some of it isn’t very surprising: Gingrich demands to be set up with two hotel rooms, a one-bedroom suite for him and a single room for his aide. What’s interesting is that the rider asks that Gingrich’s room have two bathrooms. There’s no word on why Gingrich would want two bathrooms, but perhaps the less we know the better.
   
   
4. In 2001, Jennifer Lopez joined several other performers in filming a music video remake of Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Going On.” Proceeds from the video went to benefit both victims of the recent September 11th terrorist attacks and those suffering from an African AIDS epidemic. Lopez reportedly spent about 90 minutes on a soundstage to film the video, but her rider had some specific, some might say outsized, demands. It asked for an opulent trailer with at least two entry doors. Inside the trailer, the walls had to be white, with white drapes, white couches, white candles, and white tables. If white tables could not be found, the rider permitted the use of white tablecloths, proving that J. Lo. is willing to make things easy for the organizers.
   
   
5. In what is possibly the most famously ridiculous contract rider known to lawyer-kind, rock band Van Halen once demanded that they be furnished with a bowl of M&Ms. That sounds innocuous enough, but the rider came with a caveat that the bowl could not contain any brown M&Ms. The image of hapless roadies bending over a big bowl of candy and carefully removing the brown bits is so ridiculous that some commentators have surmised that the clause was a test, a way for Van Halen’s managers to find out whether the concert organizers were bothering to read the fine print. However, the full text of the rider, which clocks in at a whopping 53 pages, comes with some other oversized demands, including four cases of “Schlitz Malt Liquor beer (16 ounce cans),” eight bottles of wine and liquor, and a few other rock star accoutrements.

As silly as some of these demands seem, they are contractually valid. A contract consists of three parts: the offer, the acceptance, and the consideration. Offer and acceptance are easy enough to understand: “The X Factor” offered Britney Spears a job and she accepted. Consideration is the benefit the contractor will receive from the agreement. In the case of the Spears deal, the consideration is the work Britney will put in as a judge. Her rider, Doritos and Snickers bars and so forth, is enforceable because she’s giving something in exchange for it.

That said, these kinds of contractual demands are often taken less seriously than other, more substantive ones. J. Lo. may have demanded a white couch in her dressing room, but she reportedly settled for a green one. The cost of going to court and paying legal fees on something so trivial likely outweighs any value that could eventually come out of litigation, so those people who have a profile high enough to make such demands probably won’t bother arguing about them in front of a judge. Still, they can likely settle for having enough influence to be able to make them in the first place.