Screenwriter Michael Alan Eddy has sued the Writer's Guild of America West after the guild refused to arbitrate his hearing on his claim that he deserves story credit for the Warner Bros. picture, "The Last Samurai."

The writer claims that he wrote a similar story 12 years ago as part of a project for Interscope called "West of the Rising Sun." He says he should have automatically been entitled to a screen credit--which is important as it would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars he could have earned, as well as lead to future jobs and a possible Oscar nod. His lawsuit accuses the WGA of fraud and conspiracy, and alleges that the secretive manner in which the organization assigns screen credits is unfair.

Eddy is also suing Warner Bros., Radar Pictures, Interscope and the three filmmakers who received writing credits on the film: John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick. Zwick is steadfast in his claims to have never read a script by Eddy. He did say that he had read something that was apparently a rewritten version of Eddy's screenplay, but in the end, scrapped it entirely. In a Screenwriter's Monthly interview Zwick said, "There was a story that existed about a very different set of events that took place at the same time. I read it and I didn?t like it. But I saw in it this glimmer of something, this historical moment that peeked my interest." (source: AP)