Lisa Kudrow to testify in court battle with ex-manager

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Lisa Kudrow will take the stand Friday to defend herself against a suit from her ex-manager who claims the actress owes him $1.7 million.

In his suit, filed in 2008, Scott Howard alleged that the Friends star refused to pay him more than $50,000 in fees from her earnings from the hit sit-com and other projects. The legal dispute began a year after he stopped working for Kudrow.

The duo's civil trial began Wednesday in Los Angeles. On the first day of the trial, Howard said he had made an oral agreement with the actress that granted him 10 percent of Kudrow's income while he was her manager.

Howard claims that after 16 years of working with the actress, she stopped paying him the agreed fee and that she owes him a percentage of the money she makes from the Friends reruns and other projects.

“One of the questions that is up for debate is whether an oral agreement, which is what Lisa and her manager had, is founded,” Lacey Rose of The Hollywood Reporter told ABC News.

Kudrow, 50, starred on Friends from 1994 until 2004. While she was one of the lowest paid cast-members in the beginning of the series -- earning $13,500 per episode -- she reportedly made more than $1 million for each of the last 18 episodes.

Her attorneys, who won't speak to the media until after they've presented their case in court, stated in documents that Kudrow had "no obligation to pay Howard" after the two stopped working together. The actress' team is also arguing that because Howard was her manager and not her agent, he is not entitled to a commission.

[ABC]