Original Beach Boys member Brian Wilson released his much-anticipated album "Smile" last week, 37 years after he conceived the musical tapestry that was to be the masterwork of California's legendary but star-crossed and fractious surf rock band. While "Brian Wilson Presents Smile" received many glowing reviews and prompted scores of tributes to the famously troubled 62-year-old Wilson, the album's release reminded me that the Beach Boys are a rock 'n' roll version of the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day."

That is, the three surviving members of the original group - Wilson, lead singer and Wilson cousin Mike Love and guitarist Al Jardine - seem forever committed, or possibly condemned, to reliving their glory days in the 1960s until they get it right, at least from their perspectives. [Two original Beach Boys, Brian's brothers Carl 1 and Dennis, are dead.] Unfortunately, the surviving original Beach Boys also seem to believe that the past and its many incarnations are best revisited through the time machine of litigation.

In their long search for an acceptable official history, the surviving Beach Boys and their holding company, Brother Records Inc., fought, over a decade or more, a series of highly publicized internecine lawsuits. These included battles over who wrote some of the group's most popular songs and who deserved the right to tour in the present day under the Beach Boys official banner. The lawsuits have left a bitter taste in the mouths of some Beach Boys fans.

Reviewing "Smile" last week in The Washington Post, for example, staff writer Tim Page commented that "whatever remained of the group itself long ago dissolved into a squalid series of suits and countersuits."

Moreover, Brian Wilson's wife, Melinda Wilson, remarked during an August interview with her husband on CNN's "Larry King Live" that, "[f]or the first time in years and years, we're lawsuit-free." But this persistent, litigious fixation on the past and its incarnations may explain why Love, who after a long legal fight between Brother Records and Jardine won the sole license to tour under the Beach Boys name, is now waging a $10 million libel suit in federal District Court in Reno, Nev., against a California alternative newspaper.

Love, who has a home in nearby Incline Village, filed the suit in February 2003 against the Ventura County Reporter and reporter Chris Jurewicz. Surprisingly, as far as I can determine, no news media have reported on the action, which has not been set for trial. Among other things, the complaint alleges that a supposedly defamatory article in the Nov. 6, 2002, edition of the Reporter written by Jurewicz and headlined "Beached Boy" was the result of a conspiracy between Jardine and Jurewicz, who writes under the name Chris Jay. The complaint claims that the article "was maliciously designed by Jay, as the agent of Jardine, to attack Plaintiff's commercial reputation, who as the lead singer, image and voice of The Beach Boys, has been irreparably damaged." The article, published in advance of an appearance by The Beach Boys in Ventura, asserted that the group fronted by Love was "not the Beach Boys."

The complaint ripostes that the Love version of the Beach Boys survived the death of Carl Wilson in 1998 and that the "departure of Jardine because of his numerous and well-documented mental/emotional problems only made the group better as is also historically documented." The complaint also accuses the Reporter and Jurewicz of repeating old slanders or misperceptions against Love, including the widespread impression that Love himself sued Jardine over the issue of who could officially and legally tour under the Beach Boy brand. I confirmed with Brother Records attorney Edwin McPherson of Los Angeles that it was Brother Records, not Love, that sued Jardine. Love's libel case lawyer, Michael J. Flynn of Cardiff, told me his client "wants a jury to see what happens when you get a vicious reporter in a vendetta."

Ron Bonn, a former CBS news producer who worked closely with Walter Cronkite and is now an adjunct professor of communications at the University of San Diego, is serving as an expert witness for Love. "As I read the article, it seemed to me crystal clear that this was about as bad a job as could be done," Bonn said, referring to Jurewicz's article. Over several weeks, lawyers for the Reporter and Jurewicz have either not returned phone calls or declined to comment. So I guess it's left to me to speak for the Fourth Estate, or maybe only common sense. Even if Love wins in court, which he might, it seems unlikely to me that many Beach Boys fans, or anyone else, will care the price of a cheap guitar that the lead singer of the Beach Boys won a libel suit in Nevada against a small California alternative newspaper. At best, it's a Pyrrhic victory that only adds to the Beach Boys' reputation for litigiousness.

Maybe both sides should give up a little pride and settle this silly tempest. And, for what it's worth, I note also that, in "Groundhog Day," the Bill Murray character repeatedly awakens to a song by Sonny and Cher, not the Beach Boys.