Locally known Detroit playwright suing Oprah

Lynn says celebs borrowed ideas from her previous work

DETROIT – A locally known Detroit playwright is taking on some really big names in television.

Vanessa Lynn claims that Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey teamed up and stole ideas from her play, and she's suing them.

Lynn's play is named "Affairs," and is sold on DVD by Walmart around the world.

Perry's soap opera, "The Haves and Have-Nots" airs on Oprah's network. Lynn claims it has several of her ideas in it.

"They're political individuals, they're very well established, well-healed individuals who have this dysfunction," said Lynn's attorney, Todd Russell Perkins. "In 'The Haves and Have-Nots,' you have the similar type of affairs occur, where you're left to believe that just, on its face, there's too much consistency for that not to have my client's play, to not have some impact or not have been borrowed from."

Harpo Productions and Tyler Perry Studios said that they had not received service of this lawsuit yet, but there have been conversations between the two parties.