Jeff Trexler has a must-read piece at The Beat about the aftermath of the DC/Siegel/Shuster lawsuit over the rights to Superman, and what could have happened instead:
By all rights, Joanne Siegel should have spent the last years of her life as the grande dame of American popular culture. Instead, she had to endure years of brutal litigation with precious little hope of seeing a final resolution, let alone one that would work in the family’s favor. She and her daughter Laura Siegel Larson had to suffer through hearing DC characterize the 1975 agreement as an undeserved gift, and now the historic 2008 ruling for co-ownership is set to disappear. In the end, she and Laura–as well as Siegel and Shuster–became marginal characters in their own story, as the Toberoff-Time Warner clash of the titans became the driving force of the case.
He has a list of possible offers that DC and Warners could have offered to the creators’ families beyond ownership of the character or financial renumeration, and every single one of them seems like something that the publisher could and should still make an attempt to do. Seriously, go read.
