The Watchmen isn’t the only movie in risk of being shut down by lawsuits and Alan Moore isn’t the only batshit author determined to condemn any adaptation of his work. The same is true of The Hobbit, which has been fighting a legal battle against J.R.R. Tolkien’s heirs for several months now.

Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien has long been opposed to any adaptation of his father’s work. He hasn’t seen the Lord of the Rings movies, but he hates them. Recently, he’s been petitioning the courts to halt production of The Hobbit. At issue is cold hard cash. He says New Line Cinema owes him money. Whether or not that’s true, today things took a step forward when according to the AP, a judge did the exact opposite and instead chose to bar Tolkien’s estate from seeking punitive damages against New Line.

They had been seeking, in addition to a shutdown of The Hobbit, more than $150 million in payouts, and here’s where things get a bit confusing. The AP’s story says that even though they’ve been barred from seeking punitive damages, an LA Superior Court Judge has also ruled that the Tolkien Estate have established a legal basis for a fraud claim against New Line. No, I do not know what that means. Is there a lawyer in the house? Put those law degrees to work and email me with an explanation. How can the Tolkien Estate can be barred from seeking damages while at the same time getting the go-ahead for a fraud claim, and should we be worried or not? Someone tell me how to feel!

Whatever it means, the trial is now scheduled for October of 2009. By then The Hobbit should be well along in production and I’ll be a quivering, weeping mass of legal confusion.