State Champ Radio Legal News
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When does a soundalike song sound a little too much alike?
Rick Astley is suing Yung Gravy over the rapper’s breakout 2022 hit that heavily borrowed from the singer’s iconic “Never Gonna Give You Up,” alleging that the new track — an interpolation that sounded a whole lot like an outright sample — broke the law by impersonating Astley’s voice.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday (Jan. 26) in Los Angeles court, Astley claims that Gravy’s “Betty (Get Money),” which reached No. 30 on the Hot 100 last year, violated the singer’s so-called right of publicity because it closely mimicked the distinctive voice Astley used in the chart-topping 1987 hit.
“In an effort to capitalize off of the immense popularity and goodwill of Mr. Astley, defendants … conspired to include a deliberate and nearly indistinguishable imitation of Mr. Astley’s voice throughout the song,” Astley’s lawyers wrote. “The public could not tell the difference. The imitation of Mr. Astley’s voice was so successful the public believed it was actually Mr. Astley singing.”
Pulling heavily from a song that boomed in recent years thanks to “Rickroll” internet memes, “Betty” was a major hit for Yung Gravy. But it often drew attention largely for its connections to Astley; the New York Times called it “a real-life rickroll that functioned as a comedy song, a TikTok trend and a nostalgia trip all at once.”
In their new lawsuit, Astley’s lawyers said the singer was “extremely protective over his name, image, and likeness,” meaning the unauthorized use of the soundalike voice had caused him “immense damage.”
Representatives for Gravy (real name Matthew Hauri) and Universal Music Group’s Republic Records (also named in the lawsuit as the label that released “Betty”) did not immediately return a request for comment.
Thursday’s new lawsuit raises big questions about the methods used in the music industry to legally borrow from older songs, an ever more popular tactic in a nostalgia-heavy age.
When they created “Betty,” Gravy and his team allegedly cleared the underlying musical composition to “Give You Up.” That gave them the legal right to recreate music and lyrics from the original in their new track — a process known as “interpolating.”
But the lawsuit says Gravy and his team weren’t able to secure a license to use the actual sound recording of the famous track — the better-known process of “sampling.” That would mean they didn’t have any right to directly copy the exact sounds, including Astley’s voice.
Instead, Astley says they hired Popnick (real name Nick Seeley) to imitate Astley’s “signature voice” on the track. At one point, the lawsuit quotes from an Instagram video in which Popnick said he wanted the song to “sound identical” to Astley voice.
By doing so without permission, the lawsuit claims that Gravy and Popnick violated Astley’s right of publicity — the legal right to control how your name, image or likeness is commercially exploited by others.
“A license to use the original underlying musical composition does not authorize the stealing of the artist’s voice in the original recording,” Astley’s lawyers wrote. “So, instead, they resorted to theft of Mr. Astley’s voice without a license and without agreement.”
Astley’s allegations rely heavily on a 1988 federal court ruling, in which Bette Midler successfully sued the Ford Motor Co. for violating her right of publicity by running a series of commercials featuring a Midler impersonator. In that case, the court sided with Midler even though Ford had obtained a license to the underlying song.
The new lawsuit was filed by Richard Busch, a prominent music litigator best known for winning the blockbuster copyright case over “Blurred Lines.” In a statement to Billboard, Busch said: “Mr. Astley owns his voice. California law is clear since the Bette Midler case more than 30 years ago that nobody has the right to imitate or use it without his permission.”
In addition to violating Astley’s right of publicity, the lawsuit also accuses Gravy of violating federal trademark law by making false statements that made it appear that the singer had endorsed the new song. In an interview with Billboard, Gravy said he had spoken with Astley and that the singer had approved of the new song — that he “fucks with the song.”
“These statements were all false,” Astley wrote in his lawsuit.
With all the many fan theories bouncing around the internet in the weeks since Miley Cyrus released her Billboard Hot 100-topping new single “Flowers,” a particular amount of attention has been paid to its relationship to Bruno Mars‘ own No. 1 hit from a decade earlier, the torch song ballad “When I Was Your Man.”
Countless fans have pointed out the lyrical similarities between the two songs — particularly their respective choruses — with “Flowers” echoing many of Mars’ regretful sentiments from an opposing, unmoved perspective. (For example, Mars laments on “Your Man,” “I should’ve bought you flowers… take you to every party, ’cause all you wanted to dance,” while Cyrus protests on “Flowers,” “I can buy myself flowers… I can take myself dancing.”) Speculation behind the extended reference has centered around the song being a favorite of Liam Hemsworth’s, furthering the idea of the song as a kiss-off to Cyrus’ real-life ex. The buzz over the two songs was even enough to give “Your Man” a nearly 20% bump in weekly streams in the frame following the release of Cyrus’ new single.
With the relationship between the two songs appearing obvious to fans, many have wondered over social media whether Mars or “Your Man” co-writers Andrew Wyatt, Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine deserve writing credits on “Flowers.” To a degree, this sort of thing — offering writing credits to obvious sources of musical inspiration — has become common practice in new songs by popular artists, even if a direct sample is not present and the use of an interpolation is an arguable matter of interpretation. Well-publicized cases of that phenomenon include Olivia Rodrigo adding Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Josh Farro to the credits of her “Good 4 U” due to the song’s musical similarities to their “Misery Business,” and Beyoncé including “Show Me Love” scribes Fred McFarlane and Allen George in the credits to her “Break My Soul” due to some overlapping sonic elements with the Robin S. smash.
The case of “Flowers” and “When I Was Your Man” is a little different, though. Those previously mentioned examples were mostly based around sonic similarities — melodic, rhythmic and textural — which were close enough in nature that a case could have been made that the original’s copyright was infringed upon. However, not only are there no direct samples or obvious interpolations between “Flowers” and “Your Man,” there are no major sonic overlaps either — no obvious shared melodies or rhythms, no major similarities in production textures. When Cyrus sings “I can buy myself flowers,” for instance, she does so in a cadence and melody of her own, without any significant similarity to how Mars sang “I should’ve bought you flowers.”
The only obvious similarities, then, are in the songs’ lyrics — which are not identical, but do share elements and ideas — and merely using some of the same words as an older song is not considered grounds for infringement.
“This is great fodder for fan theories, but lawyers should have nothing to do with it,” says Joseph Fishman, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville and an expert in music law. “There are no songwriter credits for the ‘When I Was Your Man’ writers because no license should be necessary.”
Cyrus’ arguable use of Mars’ lyrics as a reference point for her own expression is certainly not without precedent, with the “answer song” serving as a longtime staple of popular music. Famous examples include any number of responses (The Miracles’ “I Got a Job,” The Heartbeats’ “I Found a Job”) to The Silhouettes’ ’50s doo-wop staple “Get a Job,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s rejoinder to Neil Young’s “Southern Man” in their ’70s southern rock classic “Sweet Home Alabama” (“I hope Neil Young will remember/ Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”) and countless rap diss records dating back to the ongoing “Roxanne Wars” of the mid-’80s, when male rap group U.T.F.O. and female rappers Roxanne Shanté and The Real Roxanne (among others) all traded barbs with new singles. While many of these singles included lyrical references to their predecessors, most did not include additional writing credits for those songs’ performers.
“Lyrically, sure, there’s enough similarity to make listeners think that ‘Flowers’ is deliberately responding to the earlier song,” Fishman offers. “But even if we assume that’s true, so what? Using one song to issue a retort to an earlier song is not, by itself, infringement. John Mayer and Taylor Swift don’t need to cross-license anything when they write songs at each other.”
Does all this mean that there’s no chance of Mars and his co-writers eventually being added as co-writers to the “Flowers” credits? Not necessarily: Whether or not Cyrus is protected legally from legal recourse from the “Your Man” writers, she may ultimately decide to add them anyway as an act of goodwill and out of a desire to avoid further conflict, particularly with all the media attention the similarity between the songs has received. It’s not uncommon for additional songwriting credits to be added to a song after its initial release — as was the case with “Good 4 U” in 2021 — often following a period of negotiations between the concerned parties. But if the names of Mars and his co-writers stay absent in the credits, Cyrus is not likely to have any legal responsibility to give them their “Flowers” there.
Live Nation is not legally responsible for a deadly 2014 shooting backstage at a Young Jeezy concert, a California appeals court says, because such an attack was not the kind of event that the concert giant should have seen coming.
In a ruling issued Tuesday (Jan. 24), the California Court of Appeal refused to revive a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Eric Johnson, Jr., an event promoter who was shot to death during an August 2014 stop at a San Francisco-area venue during Jeezy’s Under the Influence of Music tour.
Johnson’s family claimed that Live Nation had been legally negligent because it didn’t have enough security measures in place to prevent the shooting, but the appeals court ruled that the attack was not “foreseeable” — a key requirement in proving such allegations.
“A violent attack by and between artists and their guests in the backstage area of a performance is not a foreseeable occurrence against which Live Nation should have provided preventative measures of the nature plaintiffs suggest,” Justice Stuart R. Pollak wrote in Tuesday’s opinion.
In its ruling, the appeals court suggested that Live Nation likely had good reason to be worried about incidents involving the crowd, citing reports that fights had broken out at previous events. But the court said those same red flags did not exist for potential violence backstage.
“The reports did not … indicate that any of the artists or their entourages engaged in or posed any danger of violence during the tour,” the judges wrote in the ruling. “The head of security also indicated that in her more than 10 years at the amphitheater, there had not been any violent incidents backstage.”
Attorneys for Johnson’s family did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday. A representative for Live Nation also did not return a request for comment on the ruling.
The ruling in favor of Live Nation came as the company is facing a similar case over the high-profile stabbing death of Drakeo The Ruler at the Once Upon A Time in L.A. music festival in December 2021. Filed by the late rapper’s family, that case also centers on security measures Live Nation took — or didn’t take — that might have prevented a fatal assault backstage.
Johnson, 38, was shot and killed backstage on Aug. 22, 2014, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif., a venue leased and operated by Live Nation. According to his family’s lawsuit, Johnson had been at the event to “discuss his business arrangements for Young Jeezy to appear at a concert after-party” in nearby San Jose.
According to press reports at the time, Jeezy (real name Jay Jenkins) was taken into police custody in the wake of the shooting and charged with illegal possession of a weapon. But that charge was later dropped and no additional charges were ever filed against the rapper over the incident.
“Mr. Jenkins should not have been arrested and this case should not have been prosecuted,” Jeezy’s attorney told Billboard at the time. “We are pleased it has been dismissed, although frustrated that it took the police and prosecutors months to do the right thing.”
Court records indicate that no murder charges have ever been filed against anyone over Johnson’s killing.
Earlier versions of the civil lawsuit filed by Johnson’s family directly accused Jeezy of committing the shooting, but those claims were later dropped. They were replaced by allegations similar to those made against Live Nation, claiming the rapper’s allegedly negligent conduct was partly to blame for the attack taking place.
On Tuesday, in addition to rejecting the allegations against Live Nation, the California appeals court also dismissed the claims against Jeezy. The court ruled that the family had waited too long to bring the claims, and were thus barred by the statute of limitations.
Jeezy’s attorney declined to comment on the decision.
Read the full ruling here:
A man whose back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped into a Cardi B album cover is once again asking a federal judge to revive his failed case against the rapper, arguing that the star “engaged in theatrics” on the witness stand and deprived him of a fair trial.
Weeks after Judge Cormac Carney ruled there had been enough evidence to support Cardi’s courtroom victory, Kevin Brophy formally requested a new trial Wednesday, seeking another chance to convince a jury that she “humiliated” him with the risqué cover of her 2016 Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1.
Among other things, Brophy took aim at Cardi herself, arguing that the star (real name Belcalis Almánzar) had committed “misconduct” on the witness stand by sparring with Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello.
“Almanzar repeatedly engaged in theatrics, refused to answer basic questions, impermissibly disclosed privileged and confidential settlement communications, and generally acted with total disregard and disrespect for the jury’s time and formal nature of court proceedings,” Brophy’s lawyers wrote.
Citing supposedly calm behavior when examined by her own lawyers – “a switch in demeanor that puts Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to shame” – the filing called Cardi’s testimony a “a deliberate strategy to frustrate Plaintiff’s presentation of his case and improperly influence the jury.”
Brophy sued Cardi in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of Cardi’s Gangsta Bitch. The image featured the then-rising star taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide, and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body.
Brophy’s lawsuit claimed Cardi and others involved in the cover had violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.” Cardi’s lawyers called the allegations “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown,” arguing that nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back.
During a four-day trial in October, Cardi took the stand to defend herself. When examined by Brophy’s attorney Cappello, things repeatedly got heated between the two – so much so that at one point the Judge Carney cleared the jury, told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line,” and threatened to declare a mistrial.
At the end of the trial, the jury agreed with the superstar’s defenses, clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims. Brophy later asked the judge to throw out the verdict for a lack of evidence, but the judge denied that motion in December.
In addition to criticizing Cardi’s testimony, Brophy’s new motion on Wednesday also argued that his lawyers had been denied the chance to properly cross-examine the star, and that the judge had unfairly refused to let jurors hear about Cardi’s earlier defamation trial in Atlanta.
Attorneys for Cardi will have chance to file a formal response in court in the coming weeks. The star’s lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Read the entire motion for a new trial here:
The Eastern European country of Belarus has adopted a law that essentially legalizes piracy of music and other forms of copyrighted entertainment, which could make it a hotbed for piracy well beyond its borders.
Under the law, which President Alexander Lukashenko approved in early January, copyrighted music, films and other audiovisual content originating from “unfriendly countries” can be used in Belarus without permission from rights holders.
The law doesn’t provide a list of “unfriendly countries.” But based on the Belarusian government’s previous statements, the legislation primarily targets Western nations, which slapped sanctions on Belarus following mass repressions of people for protesting the rigged presidential vote in 2020 and, more recently, because of Belarus’ support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Belarus has never been a major music market — it does not show up in the IFPI’s ranking of the 62 biggest markets — and the major global labels had traditionally run operations there from their Russian offices. Since the labels pulled out of Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have also cut ties with Belarus. The country, which sits between Russia to the east and Ukraine to the south, backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion last year by allowing Russia to launch part of its attack from Belarusian territory.
Despite its small stature in the music industry, analysts say that under the government’s piracy-permitting law Belarus could play an outsized role in spurring more global piracy.
“As Belarus is a very small music market — a rounding error in the global market — there will be little direct impact in terms of music revenues for western rights holders,” says Mark Mulligan, music analyst at MIDiA Research.
“What might be impactful though is whether piracy networks start to operate from Belarus, distributing globally but operating under the protection of Belarussian law.”
The music industry is already dealing with a spate of piracy networks based in Russia and surrounding countries that are distributing pirated content to other markets, sometimes on other continents. Among the best-known operations are the stream-ripping websites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, run by Tofig Kurbanov, who reportedly lives in southern Russia.
More than two dozen record labels and the RIAA have pursued Kurbanov in the U.S. for copyright damages. Last February, a U.S. district judge in Alexandria, Va., approved an $82.9 million judgement against the Russian for circumventing YouTube’s anti-piracy measures and infringing copyrights of audio recordings. The court found that Kurbanov’s operation drew more than 300 million users from around the world to his sites in a single year. (Kurbanov says he plans to appeal.)
And in Brazil, Paulo Rosa, IFPI affiliate Pro Música’s president, told Billboard in 2021 that most of the fake streams being peddled to consumers in the South American country originate from hacker operations in Russia.
The Belarusian piracy law could nevertheless set an example for neighboring Russia, which for months has been considering a similar move to legalize copyrighted content from certain Western countries. Since the early 2000s, Russia has often followed the example of Belarus in strengthening authoritarian rule.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a press conference on December 19, 2022.
Contributor/GI
Before the war with Ukraine, Russia had the 13th-largest music market in 2020 with revenues of $328 million, a 58% bump from 2019; it was the fastest-growing market in the world in 2019 and 2020, according to the IFPI.
While Russia’s relations with the West are at their lowest point since Cold War, and many Western companies have left the country, the legalization of piracy would likely further isolate Russia — and could “set back the Russian music industry by decades,” one person at a global music company tells Billboard.
In recent years, Russia had made a substantial effort to shed its reputation as a place where piracy ran rampant. VK, the Russian analog of Facebook, which for years allowed users to share unlicensed music tracks on the platform, eventually cleaned up its act and signed license agreements with global majors a few years ago.
Now that the majors have left Russia, dozens of pirated albums have already been reappearing on VK, including recent releases from Taylor Swift (Midnights, on Universal Music Group’s Republic Records) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (Return of the Dream Canteen, on Warner Music Group’s Warner Records).
The legalization of piracy would certainly make it harder for Western streaming services to start operating in Russia again, says Mulligan. While Russia is still “earlier in its streaming development,” he says, “longer term it could become a significant market and at that stage Western rightsholders would want to ensure that their music is being paid for when it is being consumed at scale.”
New laws legalizing piracy would fly in the face of treaty commitments made by both Belarus and Russia. Both countries are signatories to the Berne Convention and other World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)-administered treaties.
“Suspending IP protection as Belarus is presently considering would violate its obligations under these WIPO treaties and would seriously dampen Belarus’ opportunities to become integrated into the global trade community and to secure [Most Favored Nation] status, or to further integrate with the [European Union], thus minimizing its economic opportunities in the long term,” says Neil Turkewitz, president of Turkewitz Consulting Group.
Also, “any actions legalizing piracy would destroy any chance of investment in local creative industries and would hurt local artists and their fans the most,” the IFPI tells Billboard in a statement. “Such actions would be in clear breach of international copyright law and trade agreements.”
Bad Bunny has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit that accused the Puerto Rican superstar and his collaborators of “unauthorized incorporation” of three DJ Playero songs into his 2020 track “Safaera,” according to legal documents obtained by Billboard.
The “settlement in principle” was reached Jan. 17 after both parties — in this case, Bunny and the Florida-based company AOM Music — participated in a mediation. After notice of the settlement was filed with the court, a federal judge in California suspended future hearings in the case.
The court document notes that the process will “take some time since the settlement is complex and will require the review and approval of multiple corporate and individual parties.” The parties are required to submit a joint report on the status of the settlement if a dismissal of the case hasn’t been filed by Feb. 17.
Filed by AOM Music, also known as BM Records, on Sept. 27, 2021, the lawsuit claimed that Bad Bunny “stole” samples from reggaeton pioneer DJ Playero’s “Besa Tu Cuerpo,” “Chocha Con Bicho” and “Sigan Bailando” for “Safaera,” a global hit that was included on the superstar’s history-making album YHLQMDLG. “No license or authorization was obtained,” the suit alleged.
After the complaint was filed, DJ Playero took to Instagram with a statement clarifying he knew nothing of the lawsuit and had nothing but respect for all the artists involved. “I am proud that I was part of opening the doors to these artists who are known worldwide today,” he wrote, “a song that sounds on the radio and in the world with part of a track of mine is a beautiful feeling that no one can imagine.”
Produced by Tainy, DJ Orma and Subelo Neo, the nearly five-minute “Safaera” — which features Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow — is a mashup of old school perreo and reggaetón beats and samples and interpolates various classic hits, including the signature six-note hook to Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.”
When it was released in early 2020, “Safaera” was temporarily pulled from Spotify due to a claim that a fragment of the song had not cleared the corresponding rights. In a back-and-forth last year, rapper Missy Elliott weighed in on Twitter after successfully getting her royalties for the song.
Elliott’s response came after Jowell (of Jowell & Randy) claimed his royalties had dropped to 1% after the rapper was properly compensated. “Sadly you mislead all these people to make them think I have 99%,” Elliott wrote at the time. “Now I don’t talk business on line because that’s messy but now we are here I have 25% and there is 6 other samples & 15 other writers on this one song.”
Read the full settlement notice below:
A federal judge on Wednesday (Jan. 25) declared a mistrial in the high-profile courtroom battle pitting T.I. and wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris against toymaker MGA over a line of dolls, ending the proceedings after jurors heard inadmissible testimony claiming the company “steals from African Americans.”
A day after attorneys for MGA argued that the “inflammatory” testimony about cultural appropriation had ruined their chances of a fair trial, Judge James V. Selna agreed, granting a mistrial. That means the case will need to be re-tried in front of a new jury at some point in the future.
Following the mistrial, MGA told Billboard that “diversity has always been a key value” at the company: “We are disappointed that the trial was cut short, but look forward to vindicating our rights in the next trial.” An attorney for T.I. and Tiny did not immediately return a request for comment.
The ruling marks an abrupt end for the closely-watched intellectual property trial, in which T.I. and Tiny were trying to persuade a jury that MGA’s line of “OMG” dolls stole their look and name from the OMG Girlz, a defunct teen pop trio created by Tiny and starring her daughter Zonnique Pullins.
In their 2021 complaint, T.I. and Tiny alleged that MGA had committed both “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property,” stealing the look of a group of “young multicultural women.” The lawsuit included side-by-side images, aiming to show how each doll was directly based on a particular member of the OMG Girlz, who disbanded in 2015.
On the fifth day of the trial, jurors heard videotaped deposition testimony from a woman named Moneice Campbell, a former MGA customer. According to court documents, Campbell testified that she would no longer purchase the company’s products because MGA “steals from African Americans and their ideas and profit off of it.” She also said that “hundreds” of social media users had agreed with the accusations, citing the fact that “people often steal from the black community and make money off of it.”
Earlier in the case, Judge Selna had already expressly prohibited such testimony from the trial. In one such order, he ruled that statements about “cultural appropriation” were “immaterial and impertinent” to the actual legal issues at play in the case and could not be made in front of jurors.
In a written motion filed after Tuesday’s courtroom proceedings had concluded, MGA’s lawyers demanded an immediate mistrial, arguing that the impact of the inadmissible testimony on the fairness of the case “cannot be understated.”
“There is no way to unring the bell of the jury’s hearing Ms. Campbell’s emotionally charged accusations that MGA has been ‘stealing’ from the African-American community,” the MGA attorneys wrote. “Her improper testimony cannot be challenged, rebutted or cured without drawing further attention to it.”
A federal judge says Kanye West’s lawyers need to keep trying to reach their client a little bit longer before the judge will allow the attorneys to take an unusual step: printing newspaper ads announcing they’ve dropped the embattled rapper.
In an order issued Tuesday, Judge Analisa Torres denied – for now – a request by attorneys from the law firm Greenberg Traurig to take such extraordinary measures to formally cut ties with West (who has legally changed his name to Ye). The firm says it has “exhausted all methods” of contacting the rapper, but the judge is not yet convinced.
“The court finds that GT has not provided sufficient facts to support its conclusion that personal service is impracticable,” Judge Torres wrote. “GT’s latest attempts… do not indicate diligent efforts at attempting to locate Ye.”
Greenberg, one of many law firms to cut ties with Ye in the wake of his antisemitic statements last year, has been trying for months to legally notify the rapper that its lawyers will no longer be representing him in a copyright lawsuit album over a song off Donda 2. Judge Torres already approved their withdrawal, but federal litigation rules and legal ethics require lawyers to personally serve clients with formal notice that they’ve been dropped as a client.
It’s this process that Greenberg says Kanye is evading.
In a Jan. 13 request, they argued that the star was engaged in “deliberate avoidance and obstruction,” including ditching his previous representatives and changing his phone number. Faced with that obstinance, Greenberg lawyers asked earlier this month to let them notify him by mail – or to simply print the notice in public newspapers.
“Given Ye’s public status, publication of the withdrawal order will likely garner significant media attention, resulting in broader publication and provide an even greater likelihood of apprising Ye of the Order,” the Greenberg lawyers wrote in making the unusual request.
But in Tuesday’s order, Judge Torres said she would need to see more proof that Greenberg had truly run out of options. She suggested that the firm could show that it had used databases to search for a new address, or even “hiring private investigators” to locate the star.
The judge gave the firm a Feb. 15 deadline to either successfully serve notice on Kanye – or offer more detailed proof to support the newspaper plan. Kanye’s former lawyer at Greenberg did not immediately return a request for comment. A press representative for West could not immediately be located for comment.
Prosecutors in Kansas City, Missouri dismissed misdemeanor assault charges against Tool drummer Danny Carey on Monday (Jan. 23) in an incident that took place at the city’s airport in Dec. 2021. According to Fox 4, a spokesperson for the court did not give a reason for the dismissal of the charges, telling the outlet that the case was a “closed confidential matter” as of this week.
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Carey was arrested for misdemeanor assault at the Kansas City International Airport on Dec. 12, 2021 after allegedly getting into an altercation. Airport law enforcement received notice that evening of a “disturbance between two males at an airport terminal,” which resulted in Carey being arrested for misdemeanor assault and transported to a nearby Kansas City Police Dept. station.
The other man, whose name was not released at the time, was not taken into custody. Fox 4 reported that according to a ticket issued by officers, Carey intentionally inflicted injury when he allegedly yelled a homophobic slur at the unnamed victim while jabbing him in the chest with two fingers. TMZ video from the evening showed Carey being handcuffed at the airport and talking to officers outside the terminal, where he could be heard asking, “Who did I assault?”
At press time a spokesperson for Tool had not returned a request for comment from Billboard on the dismissal of the charges; a spokesperson for the Kansas City Prosecutor’s office had also not returned a request for comment at press time.
According to reports at the time, the Kansas-bred drummer performed in the stands with the school band during the University of Kansas’ basketball game against the University of Missouri the day before his arrest.
Actress Esme Bianco and Marilyn Manson have reached a settlement to end her sexual assault lawsuit against the rocker, one of several such cases accusing Manson of abuse.
In a filing made Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for both sides alerted the judge that they had “reached an agreement in principle” to “resolve” the case. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Jay D. Ellwanger, lawyer for Bianco, confirmed to Billboard that the actress had “agreed to resolve her claims against Brian Warner and Marilyn Manson Records, Inc. in order to move on with her life and career.” An attorney for Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Bianco was one of several women to accuse Manson of sexual abuse or other wrongdoing over the past two years.
Evan Rachel Wood, who began publicly dating Manson in 2007 when she was 19 and he was 39, accused him in a February 2021 Instagram post of “grooming me when I was a teenager” before he “horrifically abused me for years.” Those allegations were followed by separate lawsuits from model Ashley Morgan Smithline, former assistant Ashley Walters, and an unnamed Jane Doe accuser.
Bianco added her own lawsuit in April 2021, claiming Warner had, among other shocking allegations, “used drugs, force and threats of force to coerce sexual acts” and had “locked Ms. Bianco in the bedroom, tied her to a prayer kneeler and beat her with a whip that Mr. Warner said was utilized by the Nazis.”
Manson strongly denied the allegations, filing a motion to dismiss the case in which he accused Bianco of “cynically and dishonestly seeking to monetize and exploit the #MeToo movement.” He’s gone so far as to file a defamation lawsuit against Wood, claiming she had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously” with false allegations against the rocker. Wood denies the allegations and the case is pending.
Bianco’s lawsuit is the second against Manson to end in recent weeks. On Jan. 3, a federal judge dismissed Smithline’s case, citing the fact that she failed to retain a new lawyer after splitting with her old legal team last fall.
