The Mouse's Miserable Mikes

By Rebecca Winters

Forget Desperate Housewives. This week's juiciest backbiting scenes may come from a Delaware courtroom, where former Disney president and fallen ueber-agent MICHAEL OVITZ, near left, is expected to testify. Shareholders are suing Disney's board, claiming the 1995 hiring of Ovitz and his dismissal 14 months later by Disney CEO MICHAEL EISNER cost the company up to $200 million. The plaintiffs allege Disney could have fired Ovitz for lying (a charge his spokesman calls "hearsay and gossip") and denied him his $140 million severance. In an internal memo read in court last week, Eisner called Ovitz, once his close friend, "a psychopath" who "doesn't know right from wrong." Stay tuned for yet more evidence Disney isn't the happiest place on earth.