Legal News
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The lead singer of Motown group The Four Tops is suing a Detroit-area hospital over allegations that staffers “assumed he was mentally ill” and put him in a straight jacket when he informed them that he was a famous musician.
In a complaint filed Monday in Michigan federal court, singer Alexander Morris claims that when he visited the emergency room at Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital in April 2023 with difficulty breathing and chest pain, he was both racially profiled and unfairly treated as if he was “delusional.”
Even though he was showing “clear symptoms of cardiac distress” and had a history of such problems, Morris says that staffers removed him from oxygen support and ordered a psychological evaluation after he “revealed his identity as a celebrity figure.” When he offered to prove his identity, Morris says a white security guard ordered him to “sit his Black ass down” and physically restrained him.
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“Plaintiff had a valid identification on his person and could easily have been identified as a singer in the Four Tops group,” attorneys for Morris’ write. “Defendant hospital … blatantly refused to provide plaintiff with medical treatment due to his race and/or perceived mental disability.”
Eventually, Morris says, his wife arrived and learned “that the doctors thought he was delusional.” When he was able to show a nurse a “video of him performing at the Grammys,” he says the hospital finally agreed to cancel the psych evaluation. He was ultimately diagnosed with heart infraction – and offered what he says was an insulting mea culpa.
“Plaintiff was offered a $25.00 gift card to Meijers as an apology for the dehumanization and discrimination he faced at the hands of the hospital,” the singer’s attorneys write. “He refused to accept the gift card.”
Founded in the early 1950s, The Four Tops roared to widespread success in the 1960s and fueled the rise of the growing Motown record company. The original lineup, consisting of Levi Stubbs, Abdul “Duke” Fakir, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton, stuck together for more than 40 years and are enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fakir is the sole original member still in the group.
Morris, who joined the group in 2019, had already publicized his alleged ordeal in the past. Last spring, he threatened to sue over the alleged incident, claiming that it would have taken “two minutes” to verify his identity: “My health should’ve been first.”
In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday, a spokesperson for hospital owner Ascension said the company was “unable to provide details on cases under investigation.”
“The health, safety and well-being of our patients, associates and community members remains our top priority,” the spokesperson said. “We remain committed to honoring human dignity and acting with integrity and compassion for all persons and the community. We do not condone racial discrimination of any kind.”
Almost exactly one year after Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin of K-pop boy band EXO first pursued legal action against their longtime label and management agency, SM Entertainment, over contractual issues, a company established by the trio has now declared “full-on war” on the K-pop giant, according to Korean media reports.
Representatives for INB100, the newly established company Baekhyun founded in 2023 — which signed Chen and Xiumin for their respective solo careers, though all three remain contracted under SM for EXO’s group activities — held what has been described as an “emergency press conference” in central Seoul on Monday (June 10). Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin were not in attendance.
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During the press conference, as reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, three reps for the trio — who also perform together in a splinter unit called EXO-CBX — said that Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin have been in a monthlong dispute over fees and contracts with SM. Cha Ga-won, president and majority shareholder of INB100’s holding company, One Hundred, and one of the representatives to speak at the press conference, claimed a former SM CEO verbally promised in a recorded agreement to charge INB100 only a 5.5% fee for distributing its music releases through Kakao (the current majority shareholder of SM Entertainment), as opposed to the 15% to 20% percent typically charged to companies outside Kakao’s umbrella. But Cha says SM is now demanding a 10% royalty fee for the members’ use of the agency’s intellectual property (such as the members’ stage names, as well as EXO and EXO-CBX) in exchange for the discounted distribution fee.
“We declare a full-on war against SM Entertainment, which has made a promise that it could not keep and committed what could be perceived as fraud,” said Cha during the press conference, during which INB100 representatives also demanded that SM disclose the breakdown of EXO’s earnings — reigniting the same contract issues that were reportedly resolved last June. The representatives additionally claimed that INB100 sent a formal letter of complaint to SM Entertainment over two months ago concerning the fees and the earnings disclosure but had not received a response.
On Monday evening, SM Entertainment refuted the allegations in a press release. According to SM, an outside company imposed the 10% intellectual property fee following court mediation over past issues with previous EXO members who had exited the label while still under contract. (Between 2014-2105, three other EXO members left the group and broke their contracts with SM to focus on the China market.) SM also claims EXO-CBX’s contract is still valid, and that the trio benefits from the EXO brand but are not fulfilling their contractual obligations with SM despite the agency acting in good faith with a lower distribution rate.
SM’s statement also alleges that Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin were “poached” by Cha and MC Mong — a one-time rapper-producer in Korea who fell out of public favor following allegations that he had dodged the country’s mandatory military draft, and who went on to launch agencies of his own, including BPM Entertainment, which now houses ex-SM artist Taemin of SHINee.
SM added that it did not previously respond to INB100’s letter of complaint to avoid distracting from new EPs released by EXO members Chen, D.O., and Suho over the past month. The company concluded its statement by saying that it will respond with legal action as opposed to trying to sway public opinion through press conferences.
The Atlanta judge overseeing Young Thug’s gang trial held the rapper’s attorney in criminal contempt of court Monday (June 10) in a bizarre episode centered on claims of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness.
After attorney Brian Steel argued that the so-called ex parte meeting involved the improper coercion of a sworn witness, Judge Ural Glanville repeatedly demanded that Steel divulge who had informed him about a private meeting in his chambers. “If you don’t tell me how you got this information, you and I are going to have problems.”
Steel refused to do so, saying that it had been the meeting itself that was the problem. “You’re not supposed to have communication with a witness who’s been sworn,” he told the judge. During the meeting, Steel said he had been told, prosecutors and the judge had pressed the witness, Kenneth Copeland, to testify by saying he could be held in jail for an extended period of time if he did not.
“If that’s true, what this is is coercion, witness intimidation,” Steel told Glanville, arguing that defense counsel should have been notified of a meeting involving a sworn witness and that it was grounds for a mistrial.
After Steel continued to refuse to share where he received the information, Glanville held him in contempt and eventually ordered him taken into custody. As he was escorted out of the courtroom, into custody, Steel told the judge that Thug did not wish to proceed without his attorney present: “You’re taking away his right to counsel.”
The move to banish Steel led to confusion in the courtroom. Thug’s other attorney, Keith Adams, said he could not continue without his co-counsel, and even prosecutors asked that Steel be present for the remainder of the day if the trial was going to proceed with testimony. Judge Glanville eventually agreed, allowing Steel to re-enter, but said he had not softened his stance.
“You will go into custody at 5 o’clock today … if you don’t tell me who that is,” the judge said. “This is criminal contempt. I have asked you a question related to this particular proceeding and if you don’t tell me you’ll suffer the consequences.”
It’s unclear if the contempt will impact Steel’s ability to continue to represent Thug as the case moves forward. Steel did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his “YSL” group was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.” Prosecutors claim the group committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Jury selection kicked off in January 2023, but the trial itself did not begin until November and has since been marked by numerous delays. With dozens of witnesses still set to testify in the prosecution case, the trial is expected to run into 2025.
As the founder of LaPolt Law, a Los Angeles-based entertainment firm, I actively seek out talented students from underrepresented backgrounds to promote diversity within my firm and provide these students with an opportunity that their privileged counterparts may take for granted. I have been working with the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), co-founded by my esteemed colleague and co-writer of this piece, Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, since 2021, and I currently serve as their executive leadership council. Our collective aim remains steadfast: to champion diversity and promote developmental opportunities for minorities in the music industry.
Recently, my firm was set to hire a Black woman from Harvard Law School for an internship position. However, the candidate encountered a significant obstacle due to Harvard’s Summer Contribution Policy. I was dismayed when I learned she couldn’t accept the offer because the school’s policy would require that she apply 90% of her summer internship earnings to her tuition bill, which would have made it impossible for her to afford to live in Los Angeles for the summer and pay her bills, while also helping to support her family.
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Most aspiring law students seek admission to a top law school for the promise of excellent job prospects. This is particularly true for students from underserved communities and underrepresented students of color who face significant barriers at the outset of their careers. For these underrepresented students able to attend these high-ranked institutions and secure summer employment, it serves as an opportunity to not only change their own circumstances but those of their families. However, at Harvard, the No. 5 law school in the nation, the financial support for need-based students becomes challenging as the institution deducts up to 90% of students’ summer employment income and applies it to the next year’s tuition bill.
Pursuing a career in “Big Law” allows students to earn a salary upwards of $200,000 post-grad and a pro-rated version of this salary as a summer associate. For students from affluent backgrounds, this path often continues building generational wealth. For students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, it offers a chance to change the trajectory of their families’ lives by providing additional income to support household and medical bills.
Harvard Law’s Summer Contribution Policy stretches beyond those students working in Big Law summer associateships by imposing this policy on any student earning over $9,500. Those accepted to Harvard Law are typically aware the school doesn’t offer merit scholarships, but many students only grasp the significant impact of the policy when they embark on their 1L summer job search, often realizing its implications too late. The policy disproportionately impacts those who receive need-based aid, the majority of whom are students of color.
While some entertainment internships may escape the policy’s impact, others, such as at Disney and certain boutique/mid-sized firms, are impacted as their pay can place a student over the $9,500 threshold. Considering the difficulty of breaking into the entertainment industry, forgoing these summer opportunities can make a Harvard Law student’s dream of working in entertainment harder to realize.
With its $9,500 allowance, the Summer Contribution Policy fails to adequately support students, especially those pursuing summer employment in major entertainment cities such as Los Angeles and New York, where the average monthly rent is over $2,000. This perpetuates a cycle for low-income students of color: they receive need-based financial aid, obtain high-earning summer employment opportunities and lose most of their earnings (which are absorbed by Harvard), leaving these students economically disadvantaged or reliant on additional loans. Rinse and repeat. This cycle persists throughout their time at Harvard and contrasts starkly with the experience of wealthier students who do not rely on need-based aid.
Despite numerous attempts to eliminate or amend the policy through longstanding protests, the students’ informal movement has been unsuccessful. In a world where students of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds must work twice as hard to succeed and three times as hard to be heard, Harvard Law’s Summer Contribution Policy reflects the disadvantages these students face and thus, needs to be abolished or modified to accommodate these students instead of targeting them. My recent experience underscores the challenges faced by aspiring professionals from marginalized communities and emphasizes the importance of advocating for equitable policies within educational institutions to ensure equal access to opportunities for all students, regardless of their financial circumstances.
Dina LaPolt, owner and founder of LaPolt Law, P.C., is an entertainment attorney and activist. LaPolt Law is the only firm of its stature owned and operated by a sole female attorney. As a result of her activism in the Black community, Dina was a recipient of the Black Music Action Coalition’s Change Agent Award, and she also serves on the organization’s Executive Leadership Council.
Willie “Prophet” Stiggers is a lifelong activist, music executive and co-founder/CEO/president of the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC). Prophet has built BMAC into a unified force of action for racial equity and justice within the music industry and a catalyst using the power of music to improve communities and drive systemic change.
About four months ago, Maiden Voyage, an album of Iron Maiden radio recordings from the 1980s, popped up for sale on Coda Records’ website without the storied metal band’s permission. Andrew Wyllie, Iron Maiden’s head of business affairs, contacted the act’s labels, BMG and Warner Music, for help persuading the U.K. retailer to pull down the unauthorized album — with, he says, no success. His next call went to Corsearch.
The 75-year-old brand-protection company, which fights bootleggers using artificial intelligence, image-matching software and automated takedown notices on retail sites like Amazon, Etsy and eBay, quickly ended the sale of Maiden Voyage and social media ads for it and was “more effective in getting those records taken down than our record company,” Wyllie says. “They’ve definitely affected the bottom line.”
(A Coda rep says the store removed Maiden Voyage after hearing from Iron Maiden, the process was “very straightforward” and “we’re happy just to take stuff down if there’s a problem.”)
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For a long time, artists, managers, labels and merchandise companies have likened online bootleg sales to a game of Whac-A-Mole: When attorneys send cease-and-desist notices to unauthorized and knock-off merch retailers, the seller reemerges elsewhere. But in recent years, companies such as Corsearch and rival CounterFind have used more sophisticated methods to protect their music-business clients. They remove tens of thousands of online listings every month, hire regional attorneys to invoke the U.S. trademark statute known as the Lanham Act and prosecute violators.
“It’s scientific, it’s strategic and there are solutions,” says Eric Cohen, founder of TZU Strategies, which collaborates with Corsearch and claims to have removed 55,000 counterfeit listings on behalf of top music stars. Using “robust” technology, he says, “we are able to connect a large majority of the counterfeiters that are using multiple accounts selling on multiple platforms in multiple ways.”
Corsearch has 450 employees and 5,000 clients, including A-list artists and music companies. “We work with law enforcement we’ve had relationships with for 15 years,” vp of enforcement Joe Cherayath says.
Dallas-based CounterFind is more of a “boutique” company, says co-founder and head of business development Rachel Aronson. In 2017, the founders were working with Linkin Park when frontman Chester Bennington died and, as Aronson recalls, “An insane amount of counterfeit merch was popping up all over the place.” CounterFind removed “millions of dollars in counterfeit products from the market in one weekend,” she says.
Since then, CounterFind has expanded to 30 employees and works with Bravado, the merch company owned by Universal Music Group (UMG) that represents Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and dozens of other artists. “The majority of these major counterfeiters are working from their couches overseas and they’re creating print-on-demand products,” Aronson says.
Music bootlegging and counterfeiting is big business. Last year, U.S. Border and Customs Protection seized nearly $2.8 billion in copyright-infringing goods shipped from countries like China, Turkey and Canada. Jeff Jampol, whose company, JAM Inc., manages the estates of The Doors, Janis Joplin and others, estimates these unauthorized sellers cost artists roughly $20,000 to $50,000 for every $1 million in yearly T-shirt sales. “It’s kind of endless,” says Rick Sales, longtime manager for Slayer, Ghost, Mastodon and others. “It’s like, ‘How long is a piece of string?’”
Bravado’s president, Matt Young, adds that Counterfind and Universal Music’s in-house intellectual-property-protection team have been “proactive” and UMG artists and managers appreciate the company’s reports showing all the takedowns they’ve achieved of unauthorized material online. But “it kind of still is like Whac-A-Mole,” he says: Amazon has been “great” at strengthening its protocols to fight against bootleggers, but “these marketplaces don’t really care where this business comes from,” and “if you Google any artists, the first several things you see would be pirated goods.”
Representatives for Corsearch and CounterFind disagree. Aronson describes a repeat offender who was “basically scraping and copying an artist’s entire merch site” using a website address with one letter removed from the official URL. After months of reporting the bootlegger through its multiple hosting providers, CounterFind employed the Lanham Act to permanently remove the site and domain. In April, Corsearch worked with police in China to raid warehouses belonging to alleged online counterfeiter Pandabuy and seized millions of packages about to be shipped to customers. “The key point,” Cherayath says, “is not to stop at cease-and-desist — that’s just one of the mechanisms in the enforcement strategy.”
In addition to scouring the internet for unauthorized merch sellers and providing data to the band about where counterfeiters are located, Corsearch helps Iron Maiden discern which t-shirt manufacturers are bootleg operations and which are harmless fans who design their own apparel for a few extra bucks. The Corsearch system also allows the band’s management to respond to fans’ tips and identify bootleggers and counterfeiters based on complaints — like the Facebook scammers who promise VIP tickets and backstage access with a $500 click.
“It’s the bane of my life. As soon as we announce a tour, the bootleggers online have already stolen the image from a tour poster and put it on a t-shirt in five minutes,” Wyllie says. “The Corsearch system almost pays for itself. You’re not having to use local attorneys and you’re getting to the root of the problem pretty quickly.”
A version of this story appears in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Attorneys for Madonna and Live Nation say they’re facing a “harassment campaign” from the lawyers suing over delayed starts to the singer’s concerts, aimed at “extorting a lucrative settlement” rather than actually litigating the case.
The charged language came amid a class action accusing Madonna and Live Nation of breaking laws by making fans wait hours at December concerts in Brooklyn on her Celebration Tour — one of three such cases filed over the past six months that all make similar allegations.
Over the weekend, the dueling teams of lawyers engaged in a bizarre back and forth. On Friday (June 7), attorneys for the accusers told the judge that the two sides had “reached a settlement” that would end the case. But first thing on Monday morning (June 10), Madonna’s legal team emphatically denied that any such deal had been reached: “The parties have not settled this matter.”
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“To be clear, defendants are not necessarily opposed to settlement if certain terms can be reached,” wrote Jeff Warshafsky, a partner at the law firm Proskauer who reps Madonna and Live Nation. “But defendants will not be harassed into settlement and cannot abide false statements made to the court.”
In the filing, Madonna’s lawyer said the two sides had “discussed the possibility of settlement” but that they had “made no settlement offer” and “we do not know what plaintiffs believe they are accomplishing or trying to accomplish with the false notice.”
“The false notice is part and parcel of the harassment campaign that plaintiffs’ counsel has been waging against defendants over the last several months in hopes of extorting a lucrative settlement by forcing defendants to incur unnecessary legal fees,” Warshafsky wrote. “Whatever plaintiffs’ motive … defendants believe plaintiffs’ complaint is completely without merit and intend to fully defend themselves.”
An attorney for Madonna’s accusers did not immediately return a request for comment.
Madonna and Live Nation were first sued in January over the Brooklyn shows — a case that made headlines because it claimed the fans “had to get up early to go to work” the next day. She was later hit with a similar case in Washington, D.C. that claimed fans had waited in an “uncomfortably hot” arena and that she had lip-synched portions of the show. A third case, filed last month, echoed those claims but also alleged that Madonna’s show had been unexpectedly “pornographic.”
All three cases have been filed as class actions, seeking to represent potentially thousands of other fans who also faced the alleged delays. By starting the concerts later than expected, the cases claim Madonna and Live Nation breached their contracts with fans and violated state consumer protection laws.
Madonna’s attorneys have strongly rejected those accusations. In a request to dismiss the New York case earlier this year, her lawyers argued that simply needing to wake up early was not the kind of “cognizable injury” that can form the basis for a lawsuit. And they say that anyone buying a concert ticket is well aware that a show likely won’t start at the exact time printed on the ticket.
“No reasonable concertgoer — and certainly no Madonna fan — would expect the headline act at a major arena concert to take the stage at the ticketed event time,” her legal team wrote in April.
A version of that motion to dismiss the case remains pending. With no settlement reached, a response from Madonna’s accusers is due on July 1.
A California judge presiding over a sex trafficking case that was brought against Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) CEO/executive chairman James Dolan, the Azoff Companies and Harvey Weinstein in January is weighing several motions to throw out the lawsuit, with a decision expected to be announced as soon as early next week.
Attorney Douglas Windor, a high-profile litigator who represented Casandra Ventura (a.k.a. singer Cassie) in her since-settled sex trafficking lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed an explosive lawsuit in January on behalf of Tennessee massage therapist Kellye Croft, who alleged that Dolan and an employee of Azoff Music Management conspired to traffic her to California to have sex with Dolan — who in turn allegedly trafficked her to Weinstein.
Representing Azoff Companies is powerful New York litigator Daniel Petrocelli, partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, who has represented Donald Trump and Travis Scott. Dolan is represented by Danya Perry, a former assistant U.S. attorney and ex-chief of litigation at MacAndrews & Forbes.
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Petrocelli and Perry have each filed separate motions to dismiss the case, which is being handled by Judge Percy Anderson, while Perry has issued a blanket denial of Croft’s claims against Dolan.
Croft alleges that she was hired to work with the late Glenn Frey in October 2013 while the vocalist and Eagles frontman was touring with the band and opening act JD and the Straight Shot, which is led by Dolan. Croft alleges that Dolan befriended her during the tour, gained her trust and then sexually assaulted her before coercing her into a sexual relationship while on the road.
Two months after returning home to Nashville in the wake of the tour, Croft alleges she was contacted by an executive at Azoff Music Management and hired to work as Frey’s masseuse for the Eagles’ six-night run of concerts at Kia Forum in Los Angeles. When Croft arrived in Los Angeles, she learned that he was staying at a different hotel than the band — leading her to suspect that she was really hired by Azoff Management as a favor to Dolan.
“Ms. Croft did not perform a single massage on any member of the Eagles while working at The Forum,” Wingdor writes, alleging that “in reality, Ms. Croft was flown out to Los Angeles for the purposes of engaging in unwanted sexual acts with Dolan.”
Croft also claims that she was set up by Dolan, allegedly with the help of two Azoff employees, for an encounter with Weinstein, the disgraced film producer and convicted rapist, during her stay at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Croft says she was confronted by Weinstein in an elevator and allegedly offered a job on the set of an upcoming film — only to later be sexually propositioned by the film producer, who then followed her to her room and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.
Dolan’s relationship with Weinstein dates back to 2003 when Dolan and Weinstein were part of an investment group — which also included financier and convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein — that was hoping to purchase New York magazine. Dolan also briefly served on the board of The Weinstein Company starting in 2016.
Croft allegedly decided to file the lawsuit after Dolan sent her the lyrics to “I Should’ve Known,” a song he wrote lamenting his failure to stop Weinstein from victimizing women.
In April, Perry filed a motion to dismiss Croft’s lawsuit, arguing that even if the woman’s claims were true, she still can’t sue Dolan under the Trafficking Victims Protect Act because “the bill targets and criminalizes sex trafficking, not sexual relations (which is all that is alleged in (Croft’s complaint),” according to the motion. Wigdor responded in a separate filing that Perry’s reading of the law was “wrong.”
As to the Weinstein allegation, Perry is arguing that Dolan and other former Weinstein Company board members were already released from any claims “to alleged sexual misconduct by Weinstein” during 2018 bankruptcy proceedings. Wigdor countered that Croft “did not consent to waive her claims” and wasn’t aware of the bankruptcy.
Petrocelli’s motion to dismiss argues that Croft’s complaint “contains no facts suggesting the Azoff Entities participated in, benefitted from, or even knew about any sex trafficking scheme” when hiring her. Petrocelli also wants Croft and her attorney sanctioned for filing the lawsuit and is asking that Croft be required to pay Azoff’s legal costs.
The motions have been taken under advisement by the judge, who late last week canceled a Monday (June 3) hearing for oral arguments on the motions, noting the “Court finds this matter appropriate for decision without oral argument.“ His ruling is expected any day.
Major League Baseball’s players’ union is firing back at claims that it discriminated against Bad Bunny’s sports agency, saying the company was penalized due to “egregious and systemic” rules violations, including offering prospective clients free VIP tickets to Bad Bunny concerts.
Rimas Sports sued the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) last month, claiming the union had used a “pre-determined investigation” to ban the Puerto Rican agency to protect existing agents from competition. The lawsuit is seeking an injunction that would overturn the league’s penalties and allow Rimas to continue to represent players.
But in a response filing this week, attorneys for the union said Rimas had incurred the punishment through its own “unethical conduct” that had broken MLBPA rules — namely, offering splashy and valuable gifts to prospective clients to win them over.
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“The regulations strictly forbid such inducements,” the union’s lawyers wrote in a motion on Wednesday (June 5). “Player agents must compete for clients based on the quality of their representation, not the quality of their gifts.”
The MLBPA’s investigation into Rimas had unearthed “egregious and systemic violations” of those rules, the union’s attorneys said, quoting from an arbitrator’s ruling that said Rimas’ core strategy had been “building a baseball agency by luring players with forbidden gifts.”
“Immunizing Rimas from the consequences of its own bad conduct will harm players and other player agents by encouraging player-player agent relationships borne out of perquisites not performance,” the union’s lawyers wrote. “What Rimas seeks is a get out of jail free card for itself. The public has no interest in such an outcome.”
Launched in 2021 by Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio) and his longtime manager, Noah Assad, Rimas Sports aimed to provide homegrown representation to Major League Baseball’s many players from Latin America.
But in April, the MLBPA handed down a raft of penalties against the agency, including decertifying one agent, barring Assad from seeking certification and prohibiting existing certified agents from joining the company. When Rimas challenged the penalties, an arbitrator rejected the appeal and upheld the union’s actions.
Last month, attorneys for Rimas escalated the dispute by filing a lawsuit in federal court that accused the MLBPA of imposing a “death penalty” on the new agency. They claimed the penalties had come from a “discriminatory” investigation that had been launched because Rimas had threatened established agencies with competition.
“The ‘good ole boy’ order of baseball sports agency … was being put at risk, as these Puerto Rican ‘outsiders’ were disrupting baseball sports agency order too much, too fast,” attorneys for Rimas wrote. “This was something that the MLBPA and Rimas Sports’ competitors would not allow.”
Calling the penalties “extraordinary and unprecedented,” Rimas sought a preliminary injunction putting them on hold while the case plays out. The agency claimed the penalties had caused immediate harm, including preventing the agency from completing its agreement to sign reigning National League MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. as a client.
In its initial filing of the lawsuit, Rimas did not specifically indicate what exactly MLBPA accused the group of doing wrong. But in Wednesday’s opposition, the union laid out the accusations in great detail.
According to the filing, certain prospective clients were offered free concert tickets, including VIP concert tickets to Bad Bunny concerts and suite access to a Phoenix Suns game. Another player was allegedly offered a $200,000 interest-free loan. “This kind of conduct became culture at Rimas,” the MLBPA wrote.
The agency was “so dismissive” of the rules around illegal gifts that it continued to violate them even after they were notified that they were under investigation, the union’s attorney wrote Wednesday.
In technical terms, the MLBPA has filed both an opposition to deny Rimas an injunction, as well as a motion to compel arbitration — meaning a judge will order that the dispute must be handled via private arbitrator, not in federal court. A hearing is set for later this month for the judge to weigh the key issue in the case.
On Friday (May 31), AEG chairman/CEO Jay Marciano became the first major live music executive to voice support for the Department of Justice’s effort to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, foreshadowing the role AEG will likely play as a key witness in the DOJ’s antitrust case against Ticketmaster.
“AEG has long maintained that Ticketmaster has a monopoly in the U.S. ticketing marketplace and uses that monopoly power to subsidize Live Nation’s content businesses,” Marciano wrote in a memo to staff May 30. Beyond its longstanding criticism that Live Nation uses its scale to overpay for talent, AEG doubled down on its attacks on Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts, with Marciano telling staff that AEG and its attorneys “strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes” to the live music industry.
The government interviewed dozens of Live Nation’s competitors during its two-year anti-trust investigation, including AEG — executives at AEG have met with DOJ investigators on at least three separate occasions, including a 2023 meeting to discuss the crash of the ticket presale for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which AEG promoted through its joint venture with Louis Messina.
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That puts Marciano and AEG in a rare position to galvanize public opinion and build support for his call to staff and the larger music community to help “us lay the groundwork now for the future of the industry.”
But AEG’s claims aren’t as compelling as Marciano thinks, according to Live Nation executive vp of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall, who responded to Marciano’s May 30 letter with a statement alleging AEG is trying to use Live Nation’s antitrust case “to advance their own interests.”
“AEG supports this case — indeed, begged DOJ to file it — because it doesn’t want to pay artists market rates or convince venues to adopt its second-rate ticketing system exclusively,” Wall said in a statement provided to Billboard after Marciano’s statement was released.
AEG declined to comment for this story.
The battle between Live Nation and AEG dates back to the federal government’s 2010 approval of Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, which the government approved by imposing a number of conditions on Ticketmaster designed to increase competition. As part of those conditions, referred to as the consent decree, the DOJ required Ticketmaster to license its source code and technology to AEG to create a competing ticketing service. The government did not address some of Ticketmaster’s more controversial tactics at the time, like the use of exclusive contracts to lock venues into long-term deals, which lies at the heart of this current conflict.
AEG only licensed Ticketmaster’s technology for a year, and in 2011 announced it was instead building a new ticketing platform called AXS with the help of Montreal firm Outbox ticketing. It took two years to switch all of AEG’s venues globally to AXS Tickets, and then AEG struggled to sign on new clients, even after merging with Veritix in 2015, and in 2019 ended up losing a major client — Altitude Sports and Entertainment — to a startup called Rival launched by former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard.
AXS’ struggles were due in part to its ownership structure following the 2015 merger with Veritix, which divided ownership among AEG, private-equity firm TPG and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who previously owned Veritix. In 2019, AXS’ partners began exploring a sale of the company and looked at buying Rival or being bought by Rival, deals AEG blocked thanks to AXS’ ownership rules that required unanimous consent for all material decisions. AEG also blocked a merger between AXS and CTS Eventim, a powerful European ticketing provider that was looking for an entry point in the U.S. market to compete with Ticketmaster.
Gilbert and TPG eventually agreed to sell their stakes in AXS to AEG in 2019, which by then had started to explore a new business model for the ticketer, built around non-exclusive ticketing contracts. Instead of competing with Ticketmaster to sign venues to AXS, AEG would instead focus on expanding its use of AXS ticketing for AEG-promoted tours. Both Live Nation and AEG prefer to use their own ticketing platforms for the concerts they promote because it allows the promoters to directly control the customer data.
Hoping to encourage Ticketmaster to allow AEG to use AXS whenever it brought tours to buildings ticketed by Ticketmaster, AEG offered to allow Live Nation to use Ticketmaster at the venues AEG controls, including the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
AEG would extract a similar concession from Live Nation in 2021 that would earn a mention in the DOJ’s lawsuit against Ticketmaster. On June 15 of that year, leading venue operations company ASM Global, in which AEG owned a minority stake, announced it had renewed its agreement with Ticketmaster to provide ticketing services for a majority of the 300 venues ASM manages.
The government flagged the agreement as suspicious because AEG at the time owned 30% of ASM and had “advocated for AXS to serve as the exclusive primary ticketer for the ASM Global venues,” the complaint reads. “But ASM Global’s majority shareholder, Onex, worried that Live Nation would retaliate by withholding shows from ASM Global venues if ASM Global entirely switched away from using Ticketmaster.”
A source close to the deal called the DOJ’s version of the story an “oversimplification,” noting that AEG and Onex didn’t have the right to require ASM Global clients to use one ticketing system over the other and that the majority of clients opted to stay with Live Nation. ASM did, however, convince Live Nation to grant a rare exception to its venue contracts, allowing ASM venues contracted to Ticketmaster to switch to AXS tickets for any tours AEG brought to the buildings.
In exchange, Ticketmaster paid a large advance for the multiyear contract and issued a press release, quoting ASM Global president/CEO Ron Bension saying, “Aligning with industry leaders like Ticketmaster is a critical component in providing millions of people with the most seamless and secure live experiences.”
Happy to have secured the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, AXS decided to push for more exceptions. In 2022, AEG began routing Swift’s The Eras Tour alongside its partner, Messina Touring Group. The majority of the venues on the tour were Ticketmaster-exclusive facilities, though ASM managed five of the stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek. But two of those dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.
Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter, but not before reporting the issue to the DOJ, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.
After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and claim “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” the leadership said in a statement, adding, “We didn’t have a choice.”
In the months following, AEG’s relationship with Live Nation only worsened. In January 2023, AEG announced it was backing a U.S. tour for chart-topping singer Zach Bryan who had just released a live album called All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster. The album title succinctly encapsulated decades of anti-Ticketmaster sentiment from music fans over Ticketmaster fees, pricing and indignities and AEG was eager to get in early. With AEG as his promoter, Bryan embarked on an expansive tour of non-Ticketmaster buildings, a gambit that hadn’t been attempted since Pearl Jam in the 1990s. AEG even deployed a sophisticated anti-scalping system to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers.
Despite the tour’s success, Bryan had reached a surprising conclusion about the experience — some of his homies hated AXS tickets too.
“Everyone complained about AXS last year. Using all ticketing sites this year,” he said of his 2023 Quittin’ Time Tour, which was still being promoted by AEG but would no longer route around Ticketmaster buildings and would play all venues, regardless of which company was the ticketer.
“All my homies still do hate Ticketmaster, but hard to realize one guy can’t change the whole system,” Bryan wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “It is intentionally broken and I’ll continue to feel absolutely horrible about the cost of tickets.”
In his written response to Marciano’s letter, Wall, a former litigator for Live Nation who helped architect the 2010 consent decree, says AEG is now trying to use the legal system to compete against Ticketmaster instead of focusing on improving AXS.
Marciano contends that there are many things that the DOJ can do to level the playing field and ended his letter by encouraging his employees not to “get distracted by Live Nation spin” and instead to “prepare for a world with more competition, more innovation, artist and consumer choice, lower ticketing fees, and more music.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine justices released their annual financial disclosures on Friday (June 7), Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reported a cooler-than-usual line item: that Beyoncé had personally gifted her four concert tickets.
In a yearly report required by federal ethics laws, Justice Jackson listed her various investments, as well as a nearly $1 million book advance she received from Penguin Random House for her Lovely One memoir set to hit bookshelves this fall.
But the most notable item was under gifts, where the justice listed “Concert Tickets (4),” valued at $3,711. The source of those tickets? “Beyonce Knowles-Carter.”
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The filing, obtained by Billboard, did not include any more information, like what particular shows Justice Jackson had attended or how KBJ and Queen Bey had connected. A spokesperson for Beyoncé did not immediately return a request for comment.
This year’s SCOTUS disclosures have drawn far greater attention than usual, following revelations last year that Justice Clarence Thomas had received undisclosed expensive gifts, including trips aboard a private plane, from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. In his own report on Friday, Justice Thomas formally amended the disputed trips to his earlier filings but did not list any new travel reimbursements for 2023.
Members of the federal judiciary are not barred from owning investments, earning outside income or even accepting gifts like expensive concert tickets. But they must disclose such income to avoid any potential conflicts of interest involving cases that they’re tasked with deciding.
When faced with a financial conflict of interest — or even the appearance of such bias — lower federal judges are required to recuse themselves from cases. In a new code of conduct issued last year after the Thomas-Crow uproar, the high court agreed to follow essentially those same rules. But those new regulations noted that recusals are harder at the Supreme Court, where a justice cannot simply be replaced by another judge.
In the case of Justice Jackson, such questions would only arise if Beyoncé had business before the high court — an outcome that’s not impossible, given the rash of copyright litigation in the music industry, but seems unlikely any time soon.