Lawsuit
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After filing multiple assault lawsuits against Diddy, Tony Buzbee has been forced to withdraw from representing the alleged victims.
As per TMZ the Houston, TX. attorney will not be able to proceed with many of the lawsuits he has filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Last month the mogul’s legal representation filed a motion that he does not have authorization to practice law in the Southern District of New York. This week he submitted paperwork formally removing himself from 15 sexual assault cases. “I made an error in judgment by failing to inform you that I was not admitted to the Southern District” the paperwork read.
Tony Buzbee says he plans to remain involved while his New York based counsel will move forward with the high profile cases. U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams has yet to approve the request as per the order she filed on Tuesday, Mar. 11 demanding he explain why he didn’t make it clear he is not approved to practice law in the district.
In an exclusive statement to TMZ he details the reasoning for the move to withdraw. “I personally withdrew, not my firm, from the few federal court cases we have on file until such time as my admission is cleared up” he says. “I’m still attorney in charge in all the New York state cases and intend to file cases very soon in Nevada and California.”
This is not the first time Tony Buzbee has been accused of errors with regards to his legal practice. Back in January JAY-Z’s team called out the attorney for missing several “factual inconsistencies” in his client’s story that she was sexually assaulted by JAY-Z and Diddy back in 2000.
A federal judge is shaking up Limp Bizkit’s $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), issuing a procedural ruling that sends much of the contentious legal battle to state court but allows copyright claims to move ahead toward trial.
In a decision issued Tuesday (March 19), Judge Percy Anderson said he would decline to exercise jurisdiction over the majority of the lawsuit’s accusations against UMG, including its core claim that the band is entitled to a ruling of “rescission” that voids its deals with the label and allows it to take back copyrights to its music.
Citing concerns about “economy, convenience [and] fairness,” the judge ruled that those claims must instead be handled by state courts in New York or California. But he denied UMG’s motion to dismiss the band’s claim of copyright infringement, allowing those claims to proceed in his court.
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Though hardly a slam dunk, the ruling is a positive development for Limp Bizkit. In an earlier ruling, Judge Anderson had outright rejected the rescission claim — a holding that also meant the band couldn’t sue the label for copyright infringement. In the new decision, the judge left the question of rescission open for a future ruling by a state court, meaning that claim — and the lucrative copyright claims — are back in play.
Though the copyright claims will now move forward in his court, the judge has repeatedly stressed that those allegations can only succeed if the band’s contracts with UMG are rescinded and it regains its ownership of the copyrights. The judge could potentially pause the case while the rescission issue is litigated in state court, but he gave no indication that he would do so in Tuesday’s decision.
Frontman Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit sued in October, claiming the band had “never received any royalties from UMG” despite its huge success over the years: “The band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action.” The band argued that the damages total owed by UMG would “easily surpass $200 million” when the case was over.
But in January, Judge Anderson sided with UMG on the core question of rescission. He ruled that the band had in fact been “paid millions in advances” and that UMG had fronted “substantial sums” to record and distribute Limp Bizkit’s albums — meaning the band didn’t deserve the drastic remedy of terminating the decades-old deals in their entirety.
“Plaintiffs seek rescission of contracts that have governed the parties’ relationship beginning in 1996 — nearly 30 years — because the agreements should be rescinded as fraudulently induced,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the type of ‘substantial’ or ‘total failure’ in the performance of the contracts that could support rescission of the parties’ agreements.”
Following that ruling, Limp Bizkit responded by filing an updated version of the lawsuit. In it, the band added new factual allegations to support their demand for rescission, including that its former manager had fraudulently induced them to sign agreements, engaging in “wrongful self-dealing” while the band was “paid nothing.”
In Tuesday’s decision, Judge Anderson said those new allegations would require the kind of detailed analysis of novel state-law issues that a state-level court was better suited to address.
“The rescission claims, on which the copyright claims depend, … require an analysis of state law of both New York and California law involving facts and law that are distinct from those necessary to adjudicate the copyright claim,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs’ effort to rescind the agreements as a result of the alleged fraud committed by their former business manager appears to also raise complex and novel theories for which there is limited controlling legal precedent.”
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Diddy made another court appearance this week. The mogul has pleaded not guilty to two superseding indictments.
As per Vulture, Diddy appeared in federal court Friday (March 14) to hear some updates regarding his sex trafficking case. Additionally, he was formally accused of added charges related to his business practices. Prosecutors allege that he threatened employees with bodily harm if they did not assist in facilitating his supposed trafficking schemes.
They also say his employees would be subjected to hostile work conditions, including very long hours, which afforded them very little sleep. Even more damning are two victims that claim that they were forced to participate in the sex acts. “Victim 2” and “Victim 3” add that “on one occasion, Combs dangled a victim over an apartment balcony.” He plead not guilty to both indictments.
Diddy’s sex trafficking trial is set to start on May 5. According to CNN, his legal team has requested that jury selection commence that same day with opening statements to start May 12. He is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn; the same facility where former YouTube personality Taxstone was recently charged with smuggling contraband into.
A federal judge says the Justice Department can move ahead with a key allegation in its antitrust case against Live Nation: That the company illegally forces artists to use its promotion services if they want to perform in its massive network of amphitheaters.
In a written ruling issued Friday (March 14), Judge Arun Subramanian denied Live Nation’s request to dismiss an accusation that the concert giant illegally required artists to buy one service if they wanted to purchase another one — known in antitrust parlance as “tying.”
Ahead of the ruling, attorneys for Live Nation had argued that it was merely refusing to let rival concert promoters rent its venues, something that’s fair game under longstanding legal precedents. But the judge wrote in his ruling that the DOJ’s accusations were clearly focused on artists, not competing firms.
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“The complaint explains that due to Live Nation’s monopoly power in the large-amphitheater market, artists are effectively locked into using Live Nation as the promoter for a tour that stops at large amphitheaters,” the judge wrote, before adding later: “These allegations aren’t just about a refusal to deal with rival promoters. They are about the coercion of artists.”
The decision was not on the final merits of the DOJ’s case; the feds must still provide factual evidence to prove that Live Nation actually coerced artists. But at the earliest stage of the case, when courts must assume allegations are true, Judge Subramanian ruled that the DOJ had done enough to move ahead.
The DOJ and dozens of states filed the sweeping antitrust lawsuit in May, aimed at breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster over accusations that they form an illegal monopoly over the live music industry. The feds alleged Live Nation runs an illegal “flywheel” — reaping revenue from ticket buyers, using that money to sign artists, then leveraging that repertoire to lock venues into exclusive ticketing contracts that yield ever more revenue.
Among other accusations, the government argued that Live Nation was exploiting its massive market share in amphitheaters — allegedly 40 of the top 50 such venues in the country – to force artists to use its concert promotion services.
“Live Nation has a longstanding policy going back more than a decade of preventing artists who prefer and choose third-party promoters from using its venues,” the DOJ wrote in its complaint. “In other words, if an artist wants to use a Live Nation venue as part of a tour, he or she almost always must contract with Live Nation as the tour’s concert promoter.”
Not so, argued attorneys for Live Nation. In its own court filings, the company said that it merely refuses to rent out its portfolio of amphitheaters to the competing concert promotion companies that artists have hired — and that it is “settled law” under federal antitrust statutes that a company has “no duty to aid its competitors.”
In Friday’s decision, Judge Subramanian said that argument could succeed at trial, but that the DOJ’s basic legal theory was sound enough to survive for now: “The facts may ultimately show that the tying claim here is nothing more than a refusal-to-deal claim,” the judge wrote. “But at this stage, the court’s role is to determine whether the complaint states a plausible tying claim, and it does.”
Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment. A trial is tentatively scheduled for March 2026.
Karol G and Universal Music Group (UMG) are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over a track from the Colombian superstar’s chart-topping album Mañana Será Bonito. In a case filed in Miami federal court, producers Ocean Vibes (Jack Hernandez) and Alfr3d Beats (Dick Alfredo Caballero Rodriguez) say the singer and her co-writers stole key elements of […]
Offset is suing a producer who worked on his 2023 album Set It Off, claiming the one-time collaborator has been demanding a large increase in fees and royalties long after the deal was done.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for the former Migos member say that reps for ChaseTheMoney (Chase Rose) signed a contract ahead of the album’s October 2023 release, covering payment for his production work on the track “Worth It.” But months later, ChaseTheMoney’s new manager allegedly reached out to demand more money for the same work.
“The new manager proposed new terms for the producer agreement, including a producer fee that was more than five times the amount of the producer fee that was agreed upon, and a royalty percentage more than double,” Offset’s lawyers write in their Tuesday (March 11) court complaint.
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After Offset’s team “promptly responded” the deal had already been locked down and “would not be re-negotiated,” his lawyers say reps for ChaseTheMoney repeatedly offered other versions of the contract, each containing “different proposals as to the financial terms.”
When Offset’s team allegedly continued to refuse to alter the deal, the lawsuit claims that ChaseTheMoney began claiming that the previous manager who had negotiated the Set It Off deal — a man identified only as J Hill in court documents — was actually “not his manager” at the time the original deal was struck.
But according to Tuesday’s lawsuit, ChaseTheMoney clearly sent them to J Hill to work out the deal, saying the producer told Offset and his team via text message that Hill would “figure logistics” for clearing his contributions to “Worth It.”
“ChaseTheMoney referred to J Hill as his manager in various correspondence to Offset and his A&R team [and] ChaseTheMoney directed Offset and his A&R team to discuss the clearance of the recording with J Hill on ChaseTheMoney’s behalf,” Offset’s lawyers write. “J Hill had confirmed in writing that he represented ChaseTheMoney as his manager, and no person affiliated with or connected to ChaseTheMoney had ever claimed or contended prior to July of 2024 that that J Hill was not ChaseTheMoney’s manager.”
The terms of the original deal, according to Offset, gave Chase a $10,000 producer fee and half of the 2 percent producer royalty, minus certain amounts that were deemed recording costs and recoupable advances.
When reached for comment Thursday (March 13) via direct message on Instagram, ChaseTheMoney said: “I’m not being sued. It’s the other way around lol.” He declined to comment further, then deleted those messages. After a review of court records, Billboard was not able to locate a lawsuit filed by Chase against Offset.
Reps for Offset did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
In technical terms, the lawsuit filed this week is what’s known as a “declaratory judgment” action —meaning Offset is not accusing Chase of legal wrongdoing but instead is arguing that Chase is improperly accusing him of doing something wrong. By filing such a case, Offset is asking a judge to rule that the original contract is valid and enforceable and that he has complied with all of its requirements.
Tuesday isn’t the first time Offset has filed such a lawsuit over a music contract.
Back in 2022, the rapper filed a similar declaratory judgment lawsuit against Quality Control Music, the record label that helped launch his career as a member of Migos. In it, he claimed the company was continuing to seek to control of his solo work, even though he had “paid handsomely” for the right to break free from his original record deal: “Offset now brings this action to vindicate his rights and to make it clear to the world that Offset, not Quality Control, owns Offset’s music.”
The star later dropped that lawsuit in August 2023.
Sony Music is suing the University of Southern California (USC) for more than $25 million over claims that the college sports powerhouse illegally used songs by Michael Jackson, Beyonce and AC/DC in TikTok and Instagram videos hyping its teams.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (March 11) in New York federal court, the music giant says the school posted more than 250 videos featuring over 170 unlicensed tracks to its social media channels, including those by Britney Spears, Harry Styles, SZA, Mariah Carey, OutKast, Pink Floyd and Travis Scott.
“USC has one of the most lucrative college sports programs in the world, realizing over $200 million annually in revenues from its participation in a multi-billion dollar college sports,” the label’s attorneys write. “Despite having been on notice of its infringing conduct, USC has repeatedly failed to obtain licenses for its use of Sony Music sound recording.”
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Seeking $150,000 in so-called statutory damages for every song used, the lawsuit is demanding more than $25 million in potential damages — or more, if Sony can prove that it suffered even greater losses.
According to Sony Music, USC was notified of the problem as early as June 2021 and has been repeatedly warned since
“Rather than cease this infringing conduct, USC chose to flout copyright law, repeatedly posting new videos to the USC Social Media Pages that use Sony Music sound recordings knowingly and willfully and without permission,” the company wrote. “USC even left many uses available online after being put on notice from Sony Music that they were infringing.”
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there’s a key restriction: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.
That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years.
Beginning in 2021, all three majors sued drink maker Bang Energy over its TikTok videos, with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music eventually winning large judgments. In May, Sony filed a case against Marriott over accusations that the hotel chain had used nearly 1,000 of its songs in social media posts. In July, Kobalt and other publishers sued more than a dozen NBA teams over the same thing. The restaurant chain Chili’s has been sued twice, once by the Beastie Boys and later by UMG over tracks from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and dozens of other artists.
In Tuesday’s case against USC, attorneys for Sony say that the school’s own social media brand guidelines expressly warned against using copyrighted music in videos: “If you want to feature ‘popular music’ in your video, as in music you hear on the radio, you must license it from the publishing company and or record company,” USC’s guide allegedly reads.
“In flagrant disregard of this clear guidance, USC itself has distributed hundreds of videos (if not more) which contain infringing uses of Sony Music’s sound recordings,” Sony’s lawyers write in the lawsuit. “These uses were made without permission, without compensation to Sony Music and its artists, and in violation of USC’s own written guidelines.”
A spokesperson for USC did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday (March 12).
George Clinton is suing his one-time business partner, Armen Boladian, over allegations that he fraudulently obtained the rights to the vast majority of the funk pioneer’s music catalog.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 11) in Florida federal court, attorneys for Clinton accused Boladian and his Bridgeport Music of “abusive, deceptive, and fraudulent practices” that were aimed at stealing from Clinton and “capitalizing on his success.”
“I’m fighting for my life’s work and to ensure future generations of artists are treated fairly,” Clinton said in a statement released by his lawyers. “When you’re young and just starting out in the music industry, it’s easy for others to take advantage of you.”
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The sweeping complaint accuses Boladian of carrying out a “decades long scheme to defraud Clinton,” including improperly using the star’s signature to grant himself rights to Clinton’s music and fabricating key legal agreements. The conduct has left Boladian and Bridgeport in control of 90 percent of Clinton’s catalog, the lawsuit says.
“For decades, George Clinton has shaped the sound of music and inspired generations of artists, yet he has been systematically deprived of the rights and royalties he rightfully deserves,” said Ben Crump, an attorney who is representing Clinton in the lawsuit.
In a statement to Billboard, Boladian’s attorney Richard Busch sharply denied the allegations: “This is just the latest in a series of lawsuits that Mr. Clinton has filed against Armen Boladian and his companies over the last 30 years raising the same exact issues. He has lost each and every time, including in the very courthouse in which he has filed this latest lawsuit. We will obviously therefore be moving to dismiss this lawsuit and will be seeking sanctions.”
Notably, in addition to seeking damages, the lawsuit is seeking an injunction to stop Boladian from shopping Clinton’s catalog to potential buyers — something the star’s lawyers suggest he’s actively doing: “Plaintiff has reason to believe that Boladian is soliciting the sale of assets including the rights and ownership interests in Plaintiff catalog.”
Bridgeport Music is well-known in the world of music law. The company has filed huge numbers of copyright infringement lawsuits against major artists who allegedly sampled songs by Clinton and others, including one case against Jay-Z and another case over an N.W.A. song that resulted in an influential decision on sampling.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, Clinton’s attorneys cited that litigation campaign in his allegations against Boladian, calling his foe a “copyright troll” who uses lawsuits to exploit songs “he looted the rights to.”
“Interestingly, Clinton, the rightful owner of said catalog, has never been included as a plaintiff in these lawsuits nor has he received any portion of the millions secured by Boladian,” Clinton’s attorneys wrote.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
The legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On” has reached the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade after Sheeran’s hit was released.
In a petition filed last week, a company that owns a stake in the rights to Gaye’s 1973 song urged the justices to overturn a November ruling by a lower appeals court, which said Sheeran had done nothing wrong and that the two tracks shared only “fundamental musical building blocks.”
The company, Structured Asset Sales (SAS), says that the ruling unfairly restricted its allegations to written sheet music rather than all elements included in Gaye’s iconic recorded version. That thorny issue, which has also cropped up in other major cases over “Blurred Lines” and “Stairway To Heaven” in recent years, must finally be resolved by the high court, the company says.
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“The rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music, are at the center of the controversy,” SAS’s lawyers write in the petition, filed with the high court Thursday (March 6).
Such an appeal, known as a petition for a writ of certiorari, faces long odds. The Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the roughly 7,000 cases it receives each year, hearing only the disputes it deems most important to the national legal landscape.
Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 58 weeks on the chart. He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. That case ended in a high-profile jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing.
Thursday’s petition came in a separate case filed by SAS, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different stake in Townsend’s copyrights to the legendary song. That suit was rejected in November by the federal Second Circuit appeals court, which said the lawsuit was essentially seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”
“The four-chord progression at issue—ubiquitous in pop music—even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” the appeals court wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”
Appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court last week, attorneys for SAS argued the lower court had botched the case by relying only on the “deposit copy” — a bare-bones written version of music sent to the U.S. Copyright Office for many old songs. Doing so was not only legally erroneous but also out of step with reality, the company’s lawyers wrote.
“Nobody who understands the music industry would ever suggest that songwriters consult the deposit copies on file with the Copyright Office as part of their creative (or clearance) process,” SAS wrote to the justices. “To the extent they are aware of the music that preceded them, it is from hearing it on the radio, in movies, television and—for the last quarter century—the Internet.”
That ruling was even more legally problematic, SAS’s lawyers write, because it came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that said courts should afford less deference to legal guidance from federal agencies. By siding with Sheeran — and an agency interpretation from the Copyright Office — SAS says the lower appeals court “openly defied this Court.”
Sheeran’s attorneys can file a response brief in the weeks ahead. The court will decide whether or not to hear the case at some point in the next several months.
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A woman who named Sean “Diddy” Combs in a lawsuit last October has amended the filing, adding social media star Druski, NFL star Odell Beckham Jr., and singer Jaguar Wright over the weekend. Druski and Odell Beckham Jr. have responded to the claims, which allege that the aforementioned were involved in drugging, assaulting and raping the woman.
Ashley Parham filed the initial lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs back in October of 2024, updating the filing on Sunday (March 9) by adding Druksi, real name Drew Desbordes, Odell Beckham Jr., and Jaguar Wright, a vocal critic of the entertainment industry, to the lawsuit. Several outlets have issued reports on Parham’s lawsuit, with most writing that the filing levies serious allegations against the accused. Parham said that Druski covered himself in oil and jumped on the victim, treating her body as, quote, “a slip and slide.”
Druski took to social media to push back against Parham’s claims. In 2018, when the alleged incident took place, Desbordes stated that he was not a public figure at the time and was still living at home.
“This allegation is a fabricated lie,” began the posted statement. “I wasn’t a public figure in 2018 — I was broke living with my mom without any connections to the entertainment industry at the time of this allegation, so the inclusion of my name is truly outlandish.
Desbordes continued, “My heart breaks for actual victims of abuse, but I’m fully confident that the evidence will expose this falsehood and the individuals who are maliciously trying to game the legal system to peddle false narratives.”
Beckham replied under a post on X that Desbordes shared to say, “Boy I’ll tell u what. This world makes absolutely no sense. I am covered by God. He will prevail. I kno who am I , I kno who u are, keep ur head. That name will be cleared. Shxts stupid.”
After news of the allegations went wide, Druski’s name began trending on X, with many making comments about the comedian’s size and other low jabs. Others are also condemning Desbordes without all of the facts present, and those comments persisted through Sunday and continue today (March 10).
On X, we’ve gathered responses to the amended lawsuit below.
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