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One dubious battle might be at an end. The stepdaughter of literary legend John Steinbeck has prevailed in a lawsuit over control of the rights to his works, and was awarded $13.15 million by a Los Angeles jury on Tuesday night. Waverly Scott Kaffaga filed a lawsuit in 2014 against Thom Steinbeck, the author’s son, and his wife, Gail Knight Steinbeck, alleging that they were interfering with her ability to license film adaptations of the author’s work. Thom Steinbeck died in 2016, making his wife the sole defendant in the suit. At issue is control over the rights to Steinbeck’s works.

After a weeklong trial and just a few hours of deliberation, a Los Angeles jury has awarded $13.15 million to the stepdaughter of prolific writer John Steinbeck.

Waverly Scott Kaffaga, the daughter of Steinbeck's third wife Elaine, brought this lawsuit in 2014. She alleged she inherited control over the works at issue when her mother died and that the author's son Thom and his wife Gail Knight Steinbeck were blocking her ability to negotiate film adaptations of her stepfather's works, including East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. Thom died last year, leaving his...

There's only one known living descendant of prolific author John Steinbeck — and she isn't either of the women involved in the current trial over his intellectual property.

Steinbeck's stepdaughter, Waverly Scott Kaffaga, and his son's widow, Gail Knight Steinbeck, each testified in a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday. There was a chill in the room, and not just because the air conditioning was on overdrive battling 100-degree temperatures.

There appears to be no love lost between the two women, neither of whom is a blood relative — a fact each of their respective attorneys pointed out about their opposition.

When...

When Thomas Steinbeck, the eldest son of Nobel Prize-winning fiction author John Steinbeck, died at the age of 72 in August, he left behind a bitter family dispute that occupied more than three decades of his life. He never got to witness a decision last month determining that he and his wife, Gail Knight Steinbeck, had breached a 1983 contract by insisting that DreamWorks, Universal, Disney and others needed the couple's approval to produce new film adaptations of Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Pearl and more. The Nov. 1 ruling, which hasn't been reported until now, won't impact <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/john-steinbeck-heirs-feuding-steven-880410"...