State Champ Radio Legal News
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StubHub is facing a lawsuit from Washington DC’s attorney general over allegations that the ticket resale platform foists “convoluted junk fees” on concertgoers after luring them in with “deceptively low prices.”
In a complaint filed Wednesday, Attorney General Brian Schwalb accuses StubHub of violating the District’s consumer protection laws by using the “drip pricing” — an “exploitative pricing scheme” in which a company requires consumers to pay fees that weren’t advertised in the initial price.
“For years, StubHub has illegally deceived District consumers through its convoluted junk fee scheme,” Schwalb said in a statement announcing the case. “StubHub lures consumers in by advertising a deceptively low price, forces them through a burdensome purchase process, and then finally reveals a total on the checkout page that is vastly higher than the originally advertised ticket price.”
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The “hidden” fees imposed by StubHub total “upwards of 40% of the advertised ticket price,” the lawsuit claims, and DC consumers have allegedly paid $118 million in such fees since 2015.
In a statement, StubHub said the company was “committed to creating a transparent, secure and competitive marketplace” for its customers. “We are disappointed that the DC Attorney General is targeting StubHub when our user experience is consistent with the law, our competitors’ practices and the broader e-commerce sector. We strongly support federal and state solutions that enhance existing laws to empower consumers, such as requiring all-in pricing uniformly across platforms.”
Consumers have complained for years about “convenience” and “service” fees that are tacked onto the price of tickets for concerts and other live events. Laws requiring “all-in pricing” — the full, final cost, presented at the beginning of a sale — have been enacted by New York, California and other states in recent years. A federal bill (Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing, or TICKET, Act) was passed by the House of Representatives in May and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Hidden fees are also a key accusation in the pending antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation filed by the Department of Justice earlier this year. In that case, the DOJ has argued that such fees levied by Ticketmaster on American concertgoers “far exceed” those in other countries.
“Any fan who has logged onto Ticketmaster’s website to buy a concert ticket knows the feeling of shock and frustration as the base cost of the ticket increases dramatically with the addition of fees,” the DOJ wrote in its complaint against Live Nation. “Whatever the name of the fee and however the fees are packaged and collected, they are essentially a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ that ultimately raise the price fans pay.”
In Wednesday’s lawsuit, Schwalb argues that StubHub imposes those same fees on its customers. Calling it a “a classic bait-and-switch scheme,” the lawsuit claims the final price of a StubHub ticket is only revealed after customers have “invested time and effort clicking through an intentionally long, multi-page purchase process” — which features a countdown clock to “create a false sense of urgency.”
“StubHub designed this unfair and deceptive scheme to make more money,” Schwalb wrote. “By forcing consumers to click through over a dozen pages before they see the real price, StubHub puts consumers in the position of having to choose between either paying those unexpected fees or abandoning the time and effort they have expended.”
In addition to springing such fees at the end of a transaction, the lawsuit also accuses StubHub of choosing deceptive names for them — a claim that echoes longstanding complaints about what vaguely-named ticketing fees imposed by many companies actually cover.
“What StubHub identifies as ‘Fulfillment and Service Fees’ are in fact influenced by factors unrelated to ‘fulfillment’ or ‘service,’” the lawsuit reads. “Furthermore, the fees vary wildly, and StubHub never discloses to the consumer how those fees are calculated or what services these fees fund.”
Read the entire lawsuit against StubHub here:
The new judge in Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial has denied the rapper’s renewed request to be released from jail until a verdict is reached.
Two weeks after Judge Paige Reese Whitaker became the third judge to preside over the huge racketeering case, she rejected arguments from Thug’s attorney Brian Steel to release the rapper on bond and allow him to live under house arrest with strict monitoring.
Steel had argued that the recent turbulent events in the case — Judge Ural Glanville was ordered removed from the case over a secret meeting with prosecutors and a key witness — were the kind of “changed circumstances” that would allow her to overturn earlier rulings that kept him locked up.
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But at a hearing Tuesday, Whitaker was unswayed. “I don’t know how I would have decided the bond originally,” the judge said. “That’s not before me. These are not the kind of changed circumstances [required under precedent], so I’m not going to reconsider the bond.”
Thug — real name Jeffery Williams — and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that their YSL was not really a record label called Young Stoner Life but rather a violent Atlanta gang called Young Slime Life. Citing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
The trial kicked off in January 2023 but has faced repeated delays and disruptions, including an unprecedented 10-month jury selection, the stabbing of another defendant and now the removal of the presiding judge. Prosecutors have only presented part of their vast list of potential witnesses, and the case is expected to run well into 2025.
Thug has been sitting in jail for more than two years while the slow-moving trial has dragged on, repeatedly denied bond by Glanville over concerns that he might intimidate witnesses. But with Glanville gone, Steel argued last week that Thug should not be “languishing in the county jail” under “tortuous” conditions when he has not be convicted of a crime.
At Tuesday’s hearing, he reiterated those pleas to Whitaker. “Mr. Williams has been in custody since the 9th day of May, 2022,” Steel said. “He has sat through unnecessary jury selection for months, bringing in over 2,000 people when the jurors were chosen from the first 511. That should not be on him. That is excess. He has now sat here for a month while the antics of Judge Glanville and [prosecutors] caused him to wander in squalor in a jail.”
Though Whitaker denied Thug’s renewed request for bond, the new judge suggested during the hearing that she would speed up the pace of the case, ordering prosecutors to better organize their planned witness testimony and evidence, saying, “It should not take another seven months.”
The judge is also still considering whether case should continue at all. Thug and three of the other YSL defendants have moved for a mistrial, citing Glanville’s conduct and other issues with the case.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Whitaker denied two of those motions, including one that had argued that a brand new judge could not possibly “make informed rulings” after missing the first 19 months of a trial in which over 100 witnesses had already testified. But she left two pending, including Steel’s accusations that Glanville’s behavior had irreparably broken the case.
“If that is the case, there will be a different ruling made that will impact this trial, that may result in a mistrial, that may result in a mistrial with prejudice,” the judge said.
The 1975 and frontman Matty Healy are facing a lawsuit from the organizers of Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival, according to a report by Variety, filed over accusations that Healy’s on-stage protest of the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws resulted in the festival being shut down.
In a case filed in the UK’s High Court, Future Sound Asia is demanding $2.4 million over the July 2023 incident in Kuala Lumpur, during which Healy gave a profanity-laden speech criticizing Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ laws and then kissed bandmate Ross MacDonald.
Following the incident, local authorities revoked the festival’s license and canceled the final two nights of shows. As reported by Billboard last year, sources within Future Sound said that the incident left the festival in financial ruin and could limit future concerts in Malaysia for years.
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In its lawsuit, Future Sound claims that Healy and The 1975 breached their contract with the festival, which stipulated that they would abide by local guidelines. Those rules included kissing, swearing, smoking and drinking on stage, taking off clothes, and talking about politics or religion.
The case claims that local authorities initially refused to let The 1975 play at all, citing Healy’s drug problems. But Future Sound claims that the band appealed and promised that Healy would adhere to “all local guidelines and regulations” in order to secure approval.
A rep for the band did not immediately return a request for comment on the accusations.
Healy’s kiss and statements — he said, among other things, that it was “f—ing ridiculous to tell people what they can do with that and that” — were meant as a protest against Malaysia’s strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws, which make homosexuality a crime.
But local activists have since criticized him, calling it a “publicity stunt” by a Western rock star with a “white savior complex.” He also took light criticism from Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, who had been scheduled to play before the festival was canceled, who said that people “should be knowledgable and respectful toward the culture you’re not familiar with.”
Healy addressed those critiques in October, saying he was “pissed off” about the “liberal outrage against our band for remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Martin Shkreli argues he wasn’t required to turn over personal copies of a rare of Wu-Tang Clan album to prosecutors; a litigious rock photographer sues Warner Records in the latest of more than 50 copyright lawsuits; the new judge in Young Thug’s gang trial faces a flood of new motions; and more.
THE BIG STORY: The Plot Thickens In Wu-Tang Album Case
When Martin Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud and ordered to forfeit his copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to federal prosecutors, was he allowed to retain personal copies? PleasrDAO — a digital art collective that bought the one-of-a-kind album from the government in 2021 —certainly thinks he wasn’t. The group sued Shkreli in federal court last month, accusing him of violating that forfeiture order by retaining copies and then threatening to leak them to the public, a move it says would destroy the value of the rare album. But in a new response last week, Shkreli’s attorneys told a very different story. Everyone knows that when the disgraced “Pharma Bro” bought the only copy of Wu-Tang’s album in 2014, the deal came with bizarre contractual requirements — namely, that he couldn’t release it to the general public until 2103. But Shkreli’s lawyers say the deal did allow him to make personal copies for private use. And when he turned over the physical CD to the government, his lawyers say he wasn’t required to hand over those private copies: “Defendant continues to have the right to use them to this day.” A month into the lawsuit, two dueling visions are coming into view. Pleasr is leaning on the forfeiture order, citing a passage that banned Shkreli from taking any action that would “affect the availability, marketability or value” of the album. Defense lawyers, on the other hand, point to the government’s sale to Pleasr, arguing that the feds made no assurances that the original CD was the only copy of Shaolin in existence. “Plaintiff was well aware that its purchase of assets from did not include any promise or expectation of ‘exclusivity’ or ‘uniqueness,’” Shkreli’s lawyers wrote. “It bought a copy of a musical work that it knew was not unique, and cannot now claim to be irreparably harmed by the existence of its non-uniqueness.” For more, go read our full story on the Shaolin case — and stay tuned for a looming ruling from the judge on whether to impose a preliminary injunction against Shkreli.
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Other top stories this week…
LEGAL EXPOSURE? – Neil Zlozower, a veteran rock photographer who’s snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and many other bands, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Warner Records, accusing the label of using his photo of Tom Petty in a Facebook post without permission. It turns out the case is hardly the first for Zlozower, who has filed a whopping 57 copyright lawsuits since 2016, targeting Universal Music Group, Spotify, Ticketmaster, Mötley Crüe and many others over alleged unauthorized use of his images.CONCERT MELEE – Chris Brown and Live Nation were sued again over an alleged melee that took place backstage at a concert in Fort Worth last week, this time by a security guard who says he was “brutally and severely” beaten when he tried to break up the fight. The lawsuit, which cites Brown’s high-profile 2009 attack on his then-girlfriend Rihanna that led to a felony conviction, comes after the alleged victims themselves filed their own separate case.YSL CASE UPDATE – The new judge in Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, has been greeted by a flood of new motions, including a renewed demand to release the rapper from the “torturous conditions” he’s faced while sitting in jail for more than two years. Judge Ural Glanville, who was removed from the case earlier this month after revelations of a secret meeting with prosecutors and a key witness, had repeatedly denied such requests. SHOOTING ARRESTS – Three men were arrested in Jacksonville in connection with the deadly shooting of rapper Julio Foolio last month. Sean Gathright, 18, Alicia Andrews, 21, and Isaiah Chance Jr., 21, were each charged with premeditated first degree murder with a firearm, among other charges, over the June 23 killing.
The Tampa Police Department announced the arrest of three people on Monday (July 29) in connection with deadly shooting of rapper Julio Foolio last month. According to WFLA, three individuals — Sean Gathright, 18, Alicia Andrews, 21, and Isaiah Chance Jr., 21 — were arrested in Jacksonville and charged with premeditated first degree murder and […]
Neil Zlozower, a veteran rock photographer who’s snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, is suing Warner Records over a Facebook post featuring a picture of Tom Petty — the latest of more than 50 lawsuits the litigious photog has filed over the past decade.
In a case filed in Los Angeles federal court, Zlozower accuses Warner of infringing the copyright to his photo, which depicts ’70s-era Petty sitting in front of a record player. His lawyers claim the image was posted in 2020 to the official Facebook page for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, which Warner allegedly controls.
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“Defendant has not implemented adequate internal policies to verify copyright ownership before content use, indicating a gross negligence in legal compliance, which is essential for a company with defendant’s reach, capabilities, and level of sophistication,” Zlozower’s lawyer Craig Sanders writes in the July 23 complaint.
Warner’s alleged failure to employ such copyright protections indicates “de facto willful infringement” by the company, the lawsuit claims — a key accusation, since under U.S. copyright law “willful” violations can result in increased damages of up to $150,000 per work.
A spokesman for Warner did not return a request for comment on the lawsuit’s allegations.
The case is hardly the first for Zlozower, who has also photographed Prince, Van Halen and countless other bands and artists over a decades-long career. Since 2016, court records show he’s filed a whopping 57 copyright lawsuits against a wide range of defendants in federal courts around the country, demanding monetary damages over the alleged unauthorized use of his photographs.
Many of his cases have targeted media companies, including CBS, Buzzfeed and Vice. But he’s also twice sued Universal Music Group, once over an image of Elvis Costello and another time over a photo of Guns N’ Roses. A different case targeted Ticketmaster, accusing the Live Nation unit of using an image of Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde. In 2019, Zlozower sued the guitar maker Gibson over claims that the company used a shot of Eddie Van Halen without permission.
Copyright lawsuits over the unauthorized use of photographs on the internet are extremely common, with hundreds filed in the federal courts each year. The photographers and attorneys who bring them say it’s their only real recourse against rampant online theft of their intellectual property, often by sophisticated companies that should know better.
“Photographers who are serious about protecting their copyright have no other choice but to file suit in [court] when an infringer refuses to negotiate,” says David C. Deal, an attorney who represents photographers in such cases. “Photographers are the overwhelming losers in the digital age because they are properly compensated at a fraction of the rate at which their intellectual property is copied and used by others.”
But critics have questioned the tactics of some particularly litigious photographers and their attorneys, suggesting they’re using litigation itself as a business model — namely, by leveraging the threat of huge damages and prohibitive costs of to win as many small “nuisance” settlements as possible.
In 2019, a federal judge sharply criticized David Oppenheimer, a North Carolina photographer who filed more than 170 such lawsuits. As detailed by The Assembly, Judge Martin Reidinger cited Oppenheimer’s big demands and high volume of cases before saying that he “appears to be using the copyright laws as a source of revenue, rather than as redress for legitimate injury.”
A year earlier, a New York federal judge used harsher language about Richard Liebowitz, a Long Island attorney who filed thousands of such photo infringement cases. Judge Denise Cote labeled the lawyer a “copyright troll” — which she defined as someone who aims to win “quick” settlements that are “priced just low enough” that it makes financial sense to simply “pay the troll rather than defend the claim.”
“As evidenced by the astonishing volume of filings coupled with an astonishing rate of voluntary dismissals and quick settlements in Mr. Liebowitz’s cases in this district, it is undisputable that Mr. Liebowitz is a copyright troll,” the judge wrote in her 2018 decision.
In November 2021, Liebowitz was suspended from practicing law in New York over a pattern of misconduct, including “behavior that made a mockery of orderly litigation processes.” Earlier this year, he was disbarred by the state for failing to comply with court orders and making false statements.
According to federal court records, Liebowitz represented Zlozower in the vast majority of his copyright cases until 2021. In 2018, his firm filed nine lawsuits on behalf of the photographer, including one against Spotify over an image of Mötley Crüe on the band’s artist page. In the year 2019 alone, Liebowitz’s firm filed 14 more cases for Zlozower, including one against famed indie record store Amoeba Music.
According to Deal, many photographers face an “impossible position” on the modern internet: Allow for-profit businesses to exploit their works for free, or “insist on being properly compensated” and risk being labeled a “troll” when they take action in court. But even within that context of mass infringement, Deal says, Zlozower’s volume of litigation seems unusually high.
“The idea of one photographer filing an average of 5-6 cases per year strikes me as excessive,” Deal says, saying his own firm will only typically sue in a “very small percentage of cases” after exhausting every other option.
One of Zlozower’s earliest cases was filed against Mötley Crüe itself. Represented by Liebowitz, he accused the band in September 2016 of creating t-shirts and other concert merch for its 2014 “Final Tour” that were emblazoned with photos he had snapped of Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and other members during Crüe’s 1980s heyday. But unlike many such defendants, the band actually fought back.
During two years of litigation, attorneys for Mötley Crüe argued that the band had already paid decades earlier for the right to use those images, and that it had “continued to use them without objection ever since.” Crüe also filed its own countersuit, accusing Zlozower of infringing their trademarks and likenesses by using the band’s name and images to sell books and prints: “Zlozower never requested, nor received, consent to sell photographs depicting the likenesses of the band members of Mötley Crüe.”
But in 2020, the case against Crüe ended like many of Zlozower’s have: in a confidential settlement and the voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit, without a final ruling on the merits. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed in court filings.
Zlozower and his current attorney, Sanders, did not return requests for comment from Billboard.
Convicted pharma executive Martin Shkreli is firing back in a lawsuit over Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, arguing he had a legal right to retain copies of the one-of-a-kind album even after he handed it over to federal prosecutors.
The filing came a month after Shkreli was sued by PleasrDAO — a digital art collective that bought the album in 2021 after Shkreli was forced to forfeit it as part of his criminal case. The company is seeking an injunction barring him from leaking the album and forcing him to turn over any copies.
But in an opposition filing on Wednesday (July 24), Shkreli’s attorneys argued that he had been well within his rights when he made copies of the album before the forfeiture — and that he had not been required to turn those copies over to prosecutors.
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“Defendant continues to have the right to use them to this day,” Shkreli’s attorneys write.
PleasrDAO has argued a leak of the famously secret album would “irreparably harm” its value. But Shkreli’s attorneys say the feds made no promises to Pleasr that they were buying the only copy in existence.
“Plaintiff was well aware that its purchase of assets from did not include any promise or expectation of ‘exclusivity’ or ‘uniqueness,’” Shkreli’s lawyers write. “It bought a copy of a musical work that it knew was not unique, and cannot now claim to be irreparably harmed by the existence of its non-uniqueness.”
PleasrDAO sued Shkreli last month over the potential leak of the album, accusing him of violating both their purchase agreement and the federal forfeiture order. They also accused him of violating federal trade secrets law, which protects valuable proprietary information from misappropriation.
Wu-Tang’s legendary album was recorded in secret and published just once, on a CD secured in an engraved nickel and silver box. Though the group intended the bizarre trappings as a protest against the commodification of music, Shaolin later became the ultimate commodity. In 2015, Shkreli — soon to become infamous as the man who intentionally spiked the price of crucial AIDS medications — bought it at auction for $2 million.
When it was initially sold, Shaolin came with much-discussed stipulations — namely, that the one-of-a-kind album could not be released to the general public until 2103. But Shkreli’s lawyers say the deal granted him the right to “duplicate or replicate the work for private use.”
After Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, he forfeited the album to federal prosecutors to help pay his multi-million dollar restitution sentence. Pleasr then bought the album from the government in 2021 for $4 million, and in 2024 acquired the copyrights and other rights to the album for another $750,000.
In Wednesday’s filing, Shkreli’s lawyers argued that when the government sold the album, it expressly told Pleasr that it would not “assume” any of the promises or guarantees that had been made in Shkreli’s original deal with Wu-Tang — including the claims about the album’s one-of-a-kind status.
“It would be fundamentally unfair for this court to restrict Shkreli from his permitted use of the work after the [government] explicitly disclaimed any warranties, described the assets as being sold “As-Is, Where-Is,” and listed only physical objects to be delivered on the sale of the assets,” his lawyers write.
A hearing on the potential injunction is set for next month. A rep for PleasrDAO’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
Chris Brown and Live Nation are facing a second lawsuit over an alleged melee that took place backstage at a concert in Fort Worth last week, filed by a security guard who says he was “brutally and severely” beaten when he tried to break up the fight.
In a civil complaint filed Tuesday in Houston court, Frederick Overpeck accuses the singer of assault and battery over the alleged incident, in which Brown and members of his entourage allegedly brawled with four fans in the VIP area of the July 19 concert.
The lawsuit, which comes a day after the four alleged victims filed their own separate lawsuit, cites Brown’s “checkered past,” including a high-profile 2009 attack on his then-girlfriend Rihanna that led to a felony conviction.
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“The plaintiff herein is just the latest in a long line of individuals who have suffered at Brown’s hands,” Overpeck’s attorneys write. “This R&B performer lacks civility and boldly disregards life and health of anyone who he targets.”
According to the lawsuit, Overpeck says he witnessed Brown and his entourage attack the four men after the singer was reminded that he had “beef” with one of the alleged victims. “I don’t forget shit,” Brown allegedly said to the four men, before instructing his entourage to “fuck em up.”
Working as a security guard, Overpeck says he attempted to “de-escalate” the situation and “intervene to stop the violence,” but was “thrown out of the way” as “chairs and punches started flying.” During the fight, Overpeck says he was repeatedly kicked and that one of Brown’s men jumped on top of him.
The “brutal assault” left Overpeck with “crippling neck injuries,” the lawsuit claims, including a fractured neck that has left him unable to work and needing “extensive medical treatment.”
The lawsuit also names three members of his entourage — Conway, Hood Boss (a.k.a. Omololu Omari Akinlolu) and Sinko Ceej — as defendants. It also names tour promoter Live Nation as a defendant, accusing the company of negligence for failing to protect him despite Brown’s history of violent behavior.
The lawsuit is seeking “no less” than $15 million in damages, but such demands have little bearing on how much money is eventually awarded if a lawsuit is ultimately successful.
The case largely echoes claims made a day earlier in a separate by the four fans allegedly attacked by Brown — Larry Parker, Joseph Lewis, Charles Bush and Damarcus Powell. In that case, a Houston judge has already issued a temporary restraining order barring Brown and others from destroying any videos of the alleged incident and requiring them to hand over such evidence.
In Wednesday’s new lawsuit, attorneys for Overpeck referenced that court order – and said that they believe a video of the fight exists: “The initial assault, wherein Brown is clearly shown throwing the first punch, is captured on video. A temporary restraining order has now been entered to preserve such video.”
The new judge in Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial has been greeted by a flood of new motions, including a renewed demand to release the rapper from the “torturous conditions” he’s faced while sitting in jail for more than two years.
A week after Judge Paige Reese Whitaker took the reins in the massive racketeering case, Thug’s attorney Brian Steel asked her on Tuesday (July 23) to release the rapper on bond and allow him to live under house arrest with strict monitoring until a verdict is reached.
Judge Ural Glanville, who was removed from the case earlier this month after revelations of a secret meeting with prosecutors and a key witness, has repeatedly denied such requests. In his new motion, Steel told Whitaker that those rulings had forced Thug to “languish” in jail for years without ever being convicted of a crime.
“The most fundamental premise of our criminal justice system is that the criminally accused cannot be punished for an offense until the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Steel told the new judge in his filing. “In our society, liberty is the norm.”
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that their YSL was not really a record label called Young Stoner Life but rather a violent Atlanta gang called Young Slime Life. Citing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
The trial kicked off in January 2023 but has faced repeated delays and disruptions, including an unprecedented 10-month jury selection, the stabbing of another defendant and now the removal of the presiding judge. Prosecutors have only presented part of their vast list of potential witnesses, and the case is expected to run well into 2025.
Since being arrested on the day the indictment was released, Thug has sat in jail. Steel has repeatedly asked for pre-trial release, but Glanville rejected those requests after Fulton County prosecutors warned that the rapper might intimidate witnesses if granted bond. At a hearing last year, the judge ruled that Thug posed “a significant risk to the community.”
In Tuesday’s motion, Steel urged Whitaker to reject those concerns, repeating his previous promises that Thug would submit to strict conditions under house arrest. Steel said those conditions include the use of electronic monitoring, the hiring of off-duty police officers to guard him, subjecting all communications to monitoring and requiring searches of all people entering the home.
“This will prevent any possibility to intimidate a witness or otherwise obstruct the administration of justice,” Steel wrote. “With these parameters in mind, it cannot be said that Mr. Williams would be a threat or a danger to the community or any person or property in the community.”
Thug’s conditions while “languishing in the county jail” have been “tortuous,” Steel wrote — including 22 hours of daily isolation, “inedible food” and an “ant infested room” from which he cannot see out the windows.
“Ordering Mr. Williams to wear an ankle monitor and to be in ‘total lockdown’ in his home is the equivalent to custody and confinement and has been deemed lawful confinement without the punishment imposed by the current county jail conditions wrongly imposed on Mr. Williams,” Steel wrote.
In addition to Thug’s renewed motion for bond, Whitaker is also facing a flood of other motions as she takes over the case, including multiple requests to declare a mistrial.
Echoing a similar motion already filed by Thug’s legal team earlier this month, attorneys for Yak Gotti (Deamonte Kendrick) argued in a Tuesday filing that Glanville’s secret meeting with prosecutors was an “egregious violation” and grounds for an immediate mistrial: “Kendrick’s Constitutional rights were violated when neither he nor his attorneys were present at a critical stage of the proceedings,” attorney Doug Weinstein wrote.
Attorneys for Quamarvious Nichols, another YSL defendant, made a different argument for a mistrial: that a brand new judge could not possibly “make informed rulings” after missing the first 19 months of trial in which over 100 witnesses had already testified.
“Trials evolve and decisions are made by the court based in part on the way the trial and evidence play out over time,” attorney Bruce Harvey wrote. “This Court has missed crucial proceedings necessary to make fair and well-founded rulings and to properly instruct the jury both during and at the conclusion of trial.”
Whitaker is facing new filings from prosecutors, too. In a motion filed Tuesday, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office asked the judge to order defense attorneys to stop making “extrajudicial statements to the media” about the case, arguing that it could have a “prejudicial effect” on jurors. Prosecutors cited specific statements allegedly made by Steel, Weinstein and other defense lawyers to media outlets.
Whitaker has set a hearing date for next week to hear and potentially decide the various new motions.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. This week: Michael Jackson’s estate scores a victory in litigation over a $600 million catalog sale; Snoop Dogg is hit with a copyright lawsuit that cites Tracy Chapman; Melissa Etheridge faces a legal battle from her partners in her failed cannabis business; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Jackson Estate Scores Legal Victory
Michael Jackson’s estate won a key ruling last week in a legal battle with the late singer’s mother — and though it’s only a “tentative” win, the stakes are enormous. More than 15 years after Jackson’s death, his estate is still tied up in probate court, reportedly over unresolved tax issues. So when the King of Pop’s executors wanted to sell part of his catalog to Sony Music for more than $600 million, it asked a California judge for approval to do so. Katherine Jackson objected, arguing that the sale “violated Michael’s wishes” and that the catalog would likely continue to gain value over time if retained, among other arguments. Last week, a California appeals court tentatively rejected Katherine’s objections — ruling that it would likely rule for the estate both procedurally (that she had failed to preserve arguments on appeal) and substantively (that the estate’s executors had the power to make the Sony deal.)Go read our full story on the decision — and stay tuned for whether the court decides to finalize its ruling.
Other top stories this week…
LEGAL LEGEND – While we’re on the subject of the Jackson estate, go read Frank DiGiacomo’s excellent profile of estate co-executor John Branca, a music attorney who at various points in his career has represented Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, the Elvis Presley estate and The Rolling Stones. SNOOP LIABILITY – Snoop Dogg was sued for copyright infringement over allegations that the legendary rapper has refused to pay a veteran studio musician after using two of his backing tracks. The case offers a glimpse at industry practices surrounding the use of uncleared samples to privately “experiment” in the recording studio — and cites an earlier battle between Tracy Chapman and Nicki Minaj over that same issue. WEED WAR – Melissa Etheridge is facing a legal battle over her brief foray into the cannabis business, filed by two business partners in Northern California (Josephine and D’Angelo Roberto) who say they “invested their life’s work into the businesses” but claim the singer “abandoned them” and left them in “financial ruin.” AN “ABHORRENT SCHEME”– Attorneys for Priscilla Presley filed a lawsuit against four of her former business partners over allegations of elder abuse and fraud, accusing them of a “meticulously planned” scheme to drain Elvis Presley’s ex-wife of “every last penny she had” — including nearly $1 million to date and 80% of her future income.ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER JUDGE – Just two days after Judge Ural Glanville was ordered removed from Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial, his replacement on the trial bench (Judge Shukura L. Ingram) said that she would also recuse herself. Later the same day, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker assumed control of the massive racketeering case and now appears to be settling in to run it for the long haul. KANYE SUED AGAIN – Ye (formerly Kanye West) was sued yet again over claims of illegal sampling, this time over allegations that he used an instrumental track called “MSD PT2” in two songs from the album Donda even after he was explicitly denied permission. The case closely echoes a lawsuit filed against him by the estate of Donna Summer, which similarly claimed that he had used one of her songs even after being directly refused a license. That case settled last month. GOSSIP OR DEFAMATION? Soulja Boy launched a defamation lawsuit against social media personalities Tasha K and William The Baddest, claiming that they made false statements on a podcast about the rapper having a sexual encounter with a man — or, in the words of his lawyers, “redefining his character as a man who is not straight.” If Tasha K’s name sounds familiar, it should: She’s the gossip host who Cardi B sued for defamation over claims about STDs, drug use and prostitution, eventually winning a $4 million judgment. NBA MUSIC LAWSUITS – More than a dozen NBA teams were sued for copyright infringement by Kobalt and other music companies over allegations that the basketball teams used songs in social media videos without permission. The cases came with city-specific flair: The New York Knicks were accused of using songs by “New York legends” Jay-Z and Cardi B; the Philadelphia 76ers allegedly used music from Philly native Meek Mill; and the Atlanta Hawks took songs by “Atlanta’s own” Migos and OutKast. MUSIC AI BATTLES – How are the copyright lawsuits against AI music firms Suno and Udio going to shake out? Billboard’s Robert Levine breaks down the fair use doctrine and how it might be applied to the new frontier of training artificial intelligence models, particularly in the wake of high-profile cases involving Google Books, the Android operating system and an Andy Warhol print of Prince. ROYALTY ROW – SoundExchange sued a free streaming service called AccuRadio over allegations that the company has failed to pay royalties for music for years, claiming the streamer has “directly harmed creators.” The small streamer denied the allegations, saying it had reliably paid $12.5 million in royalties over the years but was struggling with high rates imposed on online radio. BACKSTAGE MELEE – Chris Brown, Live Nation and several members of his entourage were hit with a lawsuit over an alleged assault that took place following Brown’s concert last week in Fort Worth, Texas. The case claims that Brown and others “brutally and severely beat” four men backstage in an unprovoked attack following the show. CHIPPING AWAY – Attorneys for Live Nation asked a federal judge to dismiss part of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit — specifically, that the concert promoter uses illegal tying arrangements to operate its amphitheaters. The company argued that this practice, described as a “refusal to deal,” is common in the concert business and protected by Supreme Court precedent.
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