Legal News
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Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is facing a second lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor decades ago, this time by a woman who says he forcibly kissed and groped her in New York City in 1975.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Nov. 2) in New York court, former teen model Jeanne Bellino says she has suffered “severe and permanent emotional distress” over the incidents, which allegedly occurred over a single day in the summer of 1975 when she was 17 and Tyler was 27.
“By 1975, Tyler had acquired wealth, stature, and power as a result of his career and status as a rock star,” Bellino’s lawyers write. “Tyler used his power, influence, and authority, as a well-known musician to sexually assault Plaintiff.”
In her lawsuit, Bellino claims that she and a friend had arranged to meet Aerosmith in Manhattan. While they were allegedly walking down Sixth Avenue with his entourage, she says Tyler pushed her into a phone booth.
“While holding her captive, Tyler stuck his tongue down her throat, and put his hands upon her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and her genitals, moving and removing clothing and pinning her against the wall of the phone booth,” her lawyers write. “As Tyler was mauling and groping Plaintiff, he was humping her pretending to have sex with Plaintiff.”
During the incident, Bellino says she could feel that “Tyler’s penis was erect and it was evident to her as he rubbed it against her that he was not wearing underwear and wearing thin pants.”
Because she was “relying upon her friend for transportation,” the woman’s lawyers say, a “dazed, confused, and shocked” Bellino continued with the group to the Warwick Hotel, where the band was allegedly staying.
“At the hotel, they entered through a bar entrance and there, Steven Tyler again pinned Plaintiff against the wall, put his tongue down her throat and started humping Plaintiff, simulating sex,” the lawsuit says.
Tyler then allegedly left and returned to his room, telling Bellino he would call her up later. Sitting in the lobby “sobbing and afraid,” she alleges that a call eventually came, but she says she instead fled the hotel with the help of a doorman and a sympathetic cab driver, who took her home to Queens. She claims she “immediately shared the horror she suffered with her sister, still crying uncontrollably.”
“As a result of the sexual assault, Plaintiff was hospitalized and medicated,” her lawyers write. “Plaintiff has continued to require medication to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long term physical injury associated with the trauma.”
A rep for Tyler did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The new case comes just under a year after Tyler was sued by Julia Holcomb, who claims that the rocker repeatedly assaulted her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old. Holcomb claims to be the girl Tyler referred to in his memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, when he wrote he “almost took a teen bride” and convinced her parents to grant him guardianship over her.
“She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit.
Tyler has denied the accusations and moved to dismiss the case in April. However, his arguments raised eyebrows at the time, as one of his defenses was that he was immunized against the allegations because he had been granted legal custody over Holcomb.
Like Holcomb’s case, Bellino’s new lawsuit cites a so-called look-back law that allows alleged victims to bring cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Bellino cites the Gender Motivated Violence Act, which was amended last year to add a two-year lookback window that began on March 1.
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
A jury was finally seated Wednesday in the sweeping RICO case in Atlanta against Young Thug and other alleged members of a street gang called YSL, clearing the way for a trial to begin in late November after months of delays.
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At the end of a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court, Judge Ural Glanville swore in a jury to hear the case, in which prosecutors allege that Young Thug (Jeffery Williams) and his YSL were not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.”
The process of picking a jury began way back in January, but the effort was repeatedly delayed as the court struggled to find jurors who could commit to the massive case. With a trial expected to last many months, many prospective jurors successfully argued that they could not afford to halt their lives, citing the need to earn money, childcare commitments and health problems.
The original indictment, filed in May 2022 by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, named Thug and 27 other alleged gang members as defendants, but the upcoming trial will feature just seven. Many defendants have pleaded out of the case, including fellow star rapper Gunna (Sergio Kitchens), who accepted a plea deal last December. Others have been split from the proceedings into separate cases.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Glanville said the opening statements in the trial would kick off on Nov. 27. The jury is composed of seven Black women, two white women, two Black men and one white man, according to reports by Atlanta media outlets including the local NBC affiliate.
The YSL case is built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. Such laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up many members of an alleged criminal conspiracy based on many smaller acts that aren’t directly related. Notably, it’s the same statute that Willis is using to prosecute former President Donald Trump and several associates over allegations that tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Thug and the other defendants are accused of violating the Georgia RICO law through numerous individual “predicate acts,” including murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade, as well as other separate charges. Thug also faces several other charges over guns, drugs and other materials allegedly found in his home when he was arrested.
If fully convicted, he could face a life sentence. He’s already been in jail for 17 months since the indictment was handed down, after the judge repeatedly refused to grant him pre-trial release on bond.
Beyond indicting two of rap’s biggest stars, the YSL case also made waves because it cited their lyrics as supposed evidence of their crimes — a controversial practice that critics say unfairly sways juries and injects racial bias into the courtroom. California recently restricted the tactic in that state, but Willis has strongly defended using it against Young Thug.
The extent to which prosecutors can present lyrics as evidence at the upcoming trial is not yet settled. A hearing next week is scheduled to hear arguments from both sides before a ruling is issued ahead of the Nov. 27 start date.
Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, the former street gang leader charged with masterminding the 1996 drive-by killing of Tupac Shakur, is slated to appear in court on Thursday (Nov. 2) for his arraignment in the case. According to the Associated Press, however, it’s unclear if Davis will have a lawyer representing him during the appearance after losing his bid to be represented in court by the lawyer who spoke out in public about his defense two weeks ago.
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Attorney Ross Goodman said on Oct. 19 that he saw “obvious defenses” in the murder case, pointing out that police and prosecutors do not have a murder weapon or the car used in the shooting, as well as “no witnesses from 27 years ago.” Prosecutors have said that Davis is the last person alive who was in the car that night.
Goodman told the AP on Wednesday (Nov. 1) that Davis, 60, could not meet terms of an agreement that the judge in the case gave two weeks to hash out on Oct. 19; Goodman did not specify what was holding up such an agreement. When Davis appears in court today, Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones could order a financial accounting of Davis’ assets to determine if he can afford a lawyer of if she needs to declare him indigent and name a public defender to handle the case.
A deputy in the Clark County public defender’s office told the AP that they are reviewing the case to determine if they can represent Davis or if they have a conflict of interest such as representing other people involved in the case in the past. The judge may also name a private practice defense attorney to represent Davis at taxpayers’ expense, or assign a public defender from the county.
“We’re just not sure at this point how this will play out and who will end up representing him,” said Jordan Savage, assistant special public defender. Davis’ longtime Los Angeles personal lawyer, Edi Faal, said he expected a public defender would be named to defend Davis; Faal previously said he was helping Davis find a defense attorney in Nevada and confirmed Goodman’s involvement two weeks ago. Davis is expected to plead not guilty to the murder charge, which could land him in prison for the rest of his life.
Davis was arrested outside his suburban Las Vegas home on Sept. 29 on the same day an indictment was filed against him accusing the self-proclaimed street gang leader of orchestrating the shooting that killed Shakur, 25, and wounded his label boss, imprisoned music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Davis’ nephew, gang member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, 23, was involved in a brawl with Shakur in a Las Vegas casino on the night of the shooting and denied being involved in the shooting; he was killed in a May 1998 shooting in Compton and the other two men in the car with Davis and Anderson are also dead. Davis, meanwhile, has discussed his alleged role Shakur’s death in interviews as well as in a 2019 tell-all memoir describing his time as a Crips gang leader in Compton, including claiming that he provided the gun, was in the car and was the “on-ground, on-site commander of the effort” to kill Skakur and Knight that night.
A songwriter named Vince Vance is once again suing Mariah Carey over accusations that she stole her perennially-chart-topping “All I Want for Christmas is You” from his earlier song, a year after he dropped a previous lawsuit making the same allegations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 1) in Los Angeles federal court, Vance (real name Andy Stone) made the same basic accusations as he did in his last lawsuit: that Carey’s 1994 holiday blockbuster infringed the copyrights to his 1989 song of the exact same name. That’s no small claim: Carey’s “All I Want” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during each of the past four holiday seasons.
But the new case includes far more detailed — and far more personal — allegations against Carey, including that she made up the story of how she wrote the song, and that her own co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, has disputed that story.
“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance’s new lawyers wrote in the re-filed complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”
Notably, Vance is now represented by Gerard P. Fox, the same attorney who represented two songwriters who accused Taylor Swift of stealing the lyrics to “Shake It Off.” That case went on for more than five years of litigation before it ended in December 2022 with a confidential settlement.
Just like his first lawsuit, Vance’s new complaint claims his own “All I Want for Christmas is You” was recorded by his Vince Vance and the Valiants in 1989 and had received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her better-known song under the same name.
But his new lawsuit includes new details about the success of his earlier song, calling it a “a country music hit” that peaked at No. 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and later reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart (re-named the Radio Songs chart in 2014.) He’s also now joined as a plaintiff by Troy Powers, who claims to have co-written the earlier song.
The new version of the lawsuit also makes more detailed allegations about the similarities between the two songs, delving into the “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey allegedly copied in her song.
“The phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ may seem like a common parlance today, in 1988 it was, in context, distinctive,” Vance’s new lawyers write. “Moreover, the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”
Notably, the new complaint lawsuit also mentions Love Actually, the 2003 Christmas movie that skyrocketed Carey’s song even further into the holiday canon. The lawsuit notes that Carey’s song appears in “a featured performance scene in the penultimate act in the mega hit film.”
A rep for Carey did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling Wednesday (Nov. 1) on copyright protections for dance routines, reviving a case that accuses Fortnite creator Epic Games of stealing copyrighted moves from a celebrity choreographer who’s worked with BTS, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears.
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In a “novel” ruling on “one of the oldest forms of human expression,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a decision last year that dismissed choreographer Kyle Hanagami’s lawsuit, which claimed that Epic stole his dance moves and used them as “emotes” in Fortnite.
A lower court had tossed the case by ruling that Epic had copied only several unprotected “poses” from Hanagami’s routine. But in Wednesday’s decision, the appeals court said dance copyrights should be analyzed more holistically, more similarly to how courts dissect copyrighted music.
“We see no reason to treat choreography differently,” the court wrote. “Reducing choreography to ‘poses’ would be akin to reducing music to just ‘notes.’ Choreography is, by definition, a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into a coherent whole. The relationship between those movements and patterns, and the choreographer’s creative approach of composing and arranging them together, is what defines the work. The element of ‘poses,’ on its own, is simply not dynamic enough to capture the full range of creative expression of a choreographic work.”
The ruling does not mean Hanagami has won the lawsuit; instead, the appeals court merely said that the lower court should not have automatically dismissed the case. The two sides will now return to the lower court for more proceedings, potentially including an eventual trial.
A spokeswoman for Epic Games declined to comment on the decision.
In a statement to Billboard, Hanagami’s attorney David Hecht celebrated a ruling that he said would be “extremely impactful for the rights of choreographers, and other creatives, in the age of short form digital media.”
“Our client looks forward to litigating his claims against Epic and he is happy to have opened the door for other choreographers and creatives to protect their livelihood,” Hecht said.
Hanagami sued last year, claiming that Epic had copied a dance routine he created to a Charlie Puth song and used it without permission as the basis for a Fortnite “emote” — a pre-programmed dance move that players can purchase from Epic and employ using their digital avatars. He called it “intentional misappropriation” of his “fame and hard work.”
Attorneys for Hanagami compared the two dances as part of their legal filings:
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The case was one of many filed in recent years over the use of dance moves in games. Alfonso Ribeiro, the actor who played Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, sued Epic over the use of his heavily-memed “Carlton dance” as an emote, as did the mother of the so-called Backpack Kid who popularized the viral “Floss” dance. But those cases have faced skeptical judges in court: In 2020, a federal judge sided with Epic and tossed out a case filed by two former college basketball players over their “running man” dance.
In August 2022, Hanagami’s case faced the same fate. Siding with Epic, Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that the individual steps of his dance routine were too basic for copyright protection, and that even when combined together, they were just a “short” routine that couldn’t be covered by copyright law.
But on Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit overturned that decision, ruling that the lower court had unfairly focused on those simple “poses” and had ignored other elements of the “selection and arrangement” that Hanagami claimed Epic had copied. When those elements are all considered together, the appeals court said, his case becomes “plausible” enough to proceed toward trial.
“He has plausibly alleged that the creative choices he made in selecting and arranging elements of the choreography — the movement of the limbs, movement of the hands and fingers, head and shoulder movement, and tempo — are substantially similar to the choices Epic made in creating the emote,” the court wrote.
The ruling sends the case back to Judge Wilson’s court, where the two sides will engage in more litigation. Eventually, Epic will again seek to dismiss the case; if that fails, the lawsuit will head to a jury trial.
It seems that even some members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Swifties.
Capping off a year in which Taylor Swift’s name has repeatedly been mentioned on Capitol Hill, at the Department of Justice and on NFL broadcasts, it came up Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments in a major case over social media and the First Amendment.
As part of a legal hypothetical aimed at probing the questions in the case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked an attorney from the U.S. solicitor general’s office a question about how court should “evaluate a government employee controlling access to private property.”
“What if we have, you know, a big concert, Taylor Swift has a big concert in a private … area, a park something, and the police recognize there are going to be large crowds, et cetera, and so they come and they help with the screening of the bags and they, you know, kick out people who are rowdy,” Jackson asked. “Because it’s private, we would say that’s not state action?”
The case before the justices (Lindke v. Freed) is about whether or not public officials, including presidents, can block users on social media platforms like Facebook. Put another way: When is a government employee’s use of social media a “state action,” which is tightly governed by the First Amendment? And when is it just the action of a private citizen, which is not?
In her question, Jackson was trying to use the Taylor concert to illustrate the difficulty of pinpointing that dividing line, and testing one theory advanced by solicitor general’s office. Police are obviously agents of the government, but would their actions during such a private Swift concert not be an action by the state?
In her answer, Assistant U.S. Solicitor General Masha Hansford said the officers’ actions should still be treated as “state action” even at the Swift concert, since they would still be “carrying out their official duties.” But Justice Jackson pushed the question further.
“But Taylor Swift could have hired [a private security guard],” Jackson said. “I mean, they’re not doing anything more than a private security guard could have done, right? So what makes it that they are [engaging in] state action?”
Though Swift herself has never been directly involved in a Supreme Court case, Tuesday’s arguments were not the first time her name has come up at SCOTUS.
During arguments in a different case back in 2021, the justices repeatedly cited Swift’s lawsuit against a Denver radio DJ named David Mueller, who the superstar had claimed groped her at photoshoot. In that case, Swift sought only sought $1 in so-called “nominal damages” against Mueller – a legal tactic used in cases in which litigants want to prove a point but aren’t seeking a big payday.
The 2021 case before the justices dealt with that very same issue, and they repeatedly raised Swift’s case as a comparison.
“I’m not really interested in your money,” Justice Elena Kagan at the time, speaking from Swift’s point of view. “I just want a dollar, and that dollar is going to represent something both to me and to the world of women who have experienced what I’ve experienced.”
“What Taylor Swift wanted was, you know, vindication of the moral right, the legal right, that sexual assault is reprehensible and wrong,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett added later during the same arguments.
Maybe Swift’s case had an impact: Two months later, the Supreme Court ruled that litigants could indeed sue over the same kind of nominal damages Taylor had won against Mueller.
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: Lizzo fights back against sexual harassment allegations with the help of a famous lawyer and a creative legal argument; a federal court issues an early ruling in an important copyright lawsuit over artificial intelligence; Kobalt is hit with a lawsuit alleging misconduct by one of the company’s former executives; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Lizzo Hits Back With … Free Speech?
Three months after Lizzo and her touring company were accused of subjecting three of her backup dancers to sexual harassment, religious and racial discrimination and weight-shaming, her lawyers filed their first substantive response – and they didn’t hold back.
“Salacious and specious lawsuit.” “They have an axe to grind.” “A pattern of gross misconduct and failure to perform their job up to par.” “Fabricated sob story.” “Plaintiffs are not victims.” “They are opportunists.”
“Plaintiffs had it all and they blew it,” Lizzo’s lawyers wrote. “Instead of taking any accountability for their own actions, plaintiffs filed this lawsuit against defendants out of spite and in pursuit of media attention, public sympathy and a quick payday with minimal effort.”
That’s not exactly dry legalese, but it’s par-for-the-course in a lawsuit that has already featured its fair share of blunt language from the other side. And it’s hardly surprising given that it came from Martin Singer – an infamously tough celebrity lawyer once described by the Los Angeles Times as “Hollywood’s favorite legal hit man.”
While Singer’s quotes made the headlines, it was his legal argument that caught my attention.
Rather than a normal motion to dismiss the case, Lizzo’s motion cited California’s so-called anti-SLAPP statute — a special type of law enacted in states around the country that makes it easier to end meritless lawsuits that threaten free speech (known as “strategic lawsuits against public participation”). Anti-SLAPP laws allow for such cases to be tossed out more quickly, and they sometimes require a plaintiff to repay the legal bills incurred by a defendant.
Anti-SLAPP motions are filed every day, but it’s pretty unusual to see one aimed at dismissing a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by former employees against their employer. They’re more common in precisely the opposite scenario: filed by an individual who claims that they’re being unfairly sued by a powerful person to silence accusations of abuse or other wrongdoing.
But in Friday’s motion, Singer and Lizzo’s other lawyers argued that California’s anti-SLAPP law could also apply to the current case because of the creative nature of the work in question. They called the case “a brazen attempt to silence defendants’ creative voices and weaponize their creative expression against them.”
Will that argument hold up in court? Stay tuned…
Go read the full story about Lizzo’s defense, including access to the actual legal documents filed in court.
Other top stories this week…
RULING IN AI COPYRIGHT CASE – A federal judge issued an early-stage ruling in a copyright class action filed by artists against artificial intelligence (AI) firm Stability AI — one of several important lawsuits filed against AI companies over how they use copyrighted content. Though he criticized the case and dismissed many of its claims, the judge allowed it to move toward trial on its central, all-important question: Whether it’s illegal to train AI models by using copyrighted content.
HALLOWEEN SPECIAL – To celebrate today’s spooky holiday, Billboard turned back the clock all the way to 1988, when the studio behind “A Nightmare on Elm Street” sued Will Smith over a Fresh Prince song and music video that made repeated references to Freddy Kreuger. To get the complete bizarre history of the case, go read our story here.
KOBALT FACES CASE OVER EX-EXEC – A female songwriter filed a lawsuit against Kobalt Music Group and former company executive Sam Taylor over allegations that he leveraged his position of power to demand sex from her – and that the company “ignored” and “gaslit” women who complained about him. The case came a year after Billboard’s Elias Leight first reported those allegations. Taylor did not return a request for comment; Kobalt has called the allegations against the company baseless, saying its employees never “condoned or aided any alleged wrongdoing.”
MF DOOM ESTATE BATTLE – The widow of late hip-hop legend MF Doom filed a lawsuit claiming the rapper’s former collaborator Egon stole dozens of the rapper’s notebooks that were used to write down many of his beloved songs. The case claims that Egon took possession of the files as Doom spent a decade in his native England due to visa issues, where he remained until his death in 2020. Egon’s lawyers called the allegations “frivolous and untrue.”
DJ ENVY FRAUD SCANDAL UPDATE – Cesar Pina, a celebrity house-flipper who was charged earlier this month with running a “Ponzi-like investment fraud scheme,” said publicly last week that New York City radio host DJ Envy had “nothing to do” with the real estate deals in question. Critics have argued that Envy, who hosts the popular hip-hop radio show The Breakfast Club, played a key role in Pina’s alleged fraud by promoting him on the air.
UTOPIA SUED AGAIN OVER FAILED DEAL – Utopia Music was hit with another lawsuit over an aborted $26.5 million deal to buy a U.S. music technology company called SourceAudio, this time over allegations that the company violated a $400,000 settlement that aimed to end the dispute. The allegations came after a year of repeated layoffs and restructuring at the Swiss-based music tech company.
Back in April 1988, when DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released “A Nightmare on My Street,” the song was an immediate hit. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 was set for release a few months later, and the song – which made obvious allusions to Freddy Krueger from beginning to end – eventually climbed to No. 15 on the Hot 100.
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“Now I have a story that I’d like to tell/ About this guy you all know him, he had me scared as hell!” rapped the Fresh Prince, who later became better known by his real name, Will Smith. “He comes to me at night after I crawl into bed/ He’s burnt up like a weenie and his name is Fred!”
Just one problem: New Line Cinema, the owners of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, had already commissioned their own officially licensed Freddy Krueger rap track (“Are You Ready for Freddy”) by the Fat Boys – and, more importantly, they had specifically rejected DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s version.
Like a formulaic horror movie, you know what happens next. In July 1988, New Line took Smith, Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes) and Jive Records to federal court, arguing that “My Street” infringed their copyrights and trademarks to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise. New Line also demanded an immediate injunction to stop MTV from airing the song’s soon-to-be released music video, which featured a look-alike Krueger and many other references to the movies.
What’s the origin story of this legal monster? According to legal filings from the case, New Line started thinking about commissioning a licensed hip hop theme song for “Elm Street 4″ nearly a year before the movie was released. Eventually, they settled on The Fat Boys, a pioneering rap trio who had released their breakout Crushin’ earlier that year. In March 1988, the group released “Are You Ready for Freddy” on their third studio album, Coming Back Hard Again.
But behind the scenes, an executive at Jive had been doing his best to convince New Line to use a theme song by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince instead of the Fat Boys. According to legal filings, Smith and Townes recorded “My Street” in late 1987, and then Jive sent a copy of the track to the movie studio for consideration. Negotiations dragged on for months, but never culminated in a licensing deal.
In April, Jive released the song anyway, including it on DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s album “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.” The song told the story of the duo encountering the same haunting scenario as the movies, where Krueger kills people in real life by murdering his vicitms in their dreams
“It wasn’t a dream, man, this guy was for real,” Smith rapped. “I said, ‘Freddy, uh, pal, there’s been an awful mistake here’”
According to legal filings, as the August premiere of the movie got closer, Jive continued to get New Line to try to “change its mind” about licensing the song for the movie, including suggesting that MTV was interested in doing a music video for “My Street.” But the studio ultimately reached an official agreement with the Hot Boys to make their own licensed video for their song.
In July, New Line sent a cease-and-desist to Jive and owner Zomba Music, warning that the Fresh Prince song amounted to copyright infringement and demanding that the record be pulled from store shelves. Weeks later, New Line headed to court, accusing the Jive, Zomba, and the duo of a wide range of legal wrongdoing. Then in August, they went into overdrive after learning that Zomba had produced a music video for “My Street” and were planning to release it on MTV, demanding a preliminary injunction to block the video’s premiere.
In late August, a federal judge sided decisively with New Line. He ruled that the planned music video likely infringed the studio’s copyrights, citing the overwhelming similarities between them. And he rejected their argument that the video amounted to a legal “fair use,” saying it was instead simply an unauthorized competitor that was unfairly free-riding on New Line’s “massive promotional campaign.”
“The video exists solely as an vehicle to promote Zomba’s song,” the judge wrote, issuing the injunction banning the release of the video. “Thus, Zomba stands to profit financially by using Freddy without making the usual licensing arrangements, which in fact were made by the Fat Boys before they produced their video.”
Unlike the best horror franchises, there was no sequel to this legal fight. The case could have continued on to more litigation over the ultimate merits of the case, but after New Line won the injunction, the lawsuit quickly ended on a confidential settlement. The video was never released, and albums featured a sticker disclosing that the song was not affiliated with the movie.
But don’t forget, the killer is never quite dead: A version of “A Nightmare On My Street” is currently available on YouTube, where it now has 2.8 million views.
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Monday (Oct. 30) that artificial intelligence (AI) firm Stability AI could not dismiss a lawsuit claiming it had “trained” its platform on copyrighted images, though he also sided with AI companies on key questions.
In an early-stage order in a closely watched case, Judge William Orrick found many defects in the lawsuit’s allegations, and he dismissed some of the case’s claims. But he allowed the case to move forward on its core allegation: That Stability AI built its tools by exploiting vast numbers of copyrighted works.
“Plaintiffs have adequately alleged direct infringement based on the allegations that Stability downloaded or otherwise acquired copies of billions of copyrighted images without permission to create Stable Diffusion, and used those images to train Stable Diffusion,” the judge wrote.
The ruling came in one of many cases filed against AI companies over how they use copyrighted content to train their models. Authors, comedians and visual artists have all filed lawsuits against companies including Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, alleging that such unauthorized use by the fast-growing industry amounts to a massive violation of copyright law.
Last week, Universal Music Group and others filed the first such case involving music, arguing that Anthropic PBC was infringing copyrights en masse by using “vast amounts” of music to teach its software how to spit out new lyrics.
Rulings in the earlier AI copyright cases could provide important guidance on how such legal questions will be handled by courts, potentially impacting how UMG’s lawsuit and others like it play out in the future.
Monday’s decision came in a class action filed by artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz against Stability AI Ltd. over its Stable Diffusion — an AI-powered image generator. The lawsuit also targeted Midjourney Inc. and DeviantArt Inc., two companies that use Stable Diffusion as the basis for their own image generators.
In his ruling, Judge Orrick dismissed many of the lawsuit’s claims. He booted McKernan and Ortiz from the case entirely and ordered the plaintiffs to re-file an amended version of their case with much more detail about the specific allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt.
The judge also cast doubt on the allegation that every “output” image produced by Stable Diffusion would itself be a copyright-infringing “derivative” of the images that were used to train the model — a ruling that could dramatically limit the scope of the lawsuit. The judge suggested that such images might only be infringing if they themselves looked “substantially similar” to a particular training image.
But Judge Orrick included no such critiques for the central accusation that Stability AI infringed Andersen’s copyrights by using them for training without permission — the basic allegation at the center of all of the AI copyright lawsuits, including the one filed by UMG. Andersen will still need to prove that such an accusation is true in future litigation, but the judge said she should be given the chance to do so.
“Even Stability recognizes that determination of the truth of these allegations — whether copying in violation of the Copyright Act occurred in the context of training Stable Diffusion or occurs when Stable Diffusion is run — cannot be resolved at this juncture,” Orrick wrote in his decision.
Attorneys for Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt did not return requests for comment. Attorneys for the artists praised the judge for allowing their “core claim” to move forward and onto “a path to trial.”
“As is common in a complex case, Judge Orrick granted the plaintiffs permission to amend most of their other claims,” said plaintiffs’ attorneys Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick after the ruling. “We’re confident that we can address the court’s concerns.”
Lizzo’s attorneys are firing back at a bombshell sexual harassment lawsuit filed by three of her former dancers, calling the allegations a “fabricated sob story” launched by “opportunists” seeking “a quick payday.”
In a motion to dismiss the case filed Friday (Oct. 27) in Los Angeles court, Lizzo’s team argued that the lawsuit — claiming sexual harassment discrimination, and fat-shaming — came from three women with “an axe to grind” who had shown “a pattern of gross misconduct and failure to perform their job up to par.”
“Plaintiffs embarked on a press tour, vilifying defendants and pushing their fabricated sob story in the courts and in the media. That ends today,” wrote Martin D. Singer, a well-known Hollywood attorney. “Instead of taking any accountability for their own actions, plaintiffs filed this lawsuit against defendants out of spite and in pursuit of media attention, public sympathy and a quick payday with minimal effort.”
In support of their motion, Lizzo’s attorneys also filed sworn statements from 18 members of her touring company who dispute many of the lawsuit’s specific factual accusations. That included several who challenged the headline-grabbing claim that Lizzo fat-shamed some of her dancers — a particularly loaded allegation against a singer who has made body positivity a key part of her brand.
“I never saw anyone, including plaintiffs, being weight shamed or body shamed,” one dancer wrote in Friday’s legal filings. “Far from it. Lizzo inspired all of us to celebrate and love ourselves and our bodies as we are.”
In their motion, Lizzo’s lawyers argued that the case should be dismissed immediately under California’s so-called anti-SLAPP statute — a special type of law enacted in states around the country that makes it easier to quickly end meritless lawsuits that threaten free speech.
It’s unusual to see an anti-SLAPP motion aimed at dismissing a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former employees against their employer. Such motions are more common in defamation cases, where a defendant argues that a powerful plaintiff is abusing the court system to silence them from speaking out.
But in Friday’s motion, Lizzo’s lawyers argued that the anti-SLAPP law could also apply to the current case because of the creative nature of the work in question.
“The complaint — and plaintiffs’ carefully choreographed media blitz surrounding its filing — is a brazen attempt to silence defendants’ creative voices and weaponize their creative expression against them,” Singer and Lizzo’s other lawyers wrote.
The case against Lizzo, filed in August by dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez, accuses the singer (real name Melissa Jefferson) and her Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. of creating a hostile work environment through a wide range of legal wrongdoing, including not just sexual harassment but also religious and racial discrimination. The alleged weight-shaming, the lawsuit claims, amounted to a form of disability discrimination.
In one particularly vivid allegation, Lizzo’s accusers claimed she pushed them to attend a live sex show at a venue in Amsterdam’s famed Red Light District called Bananenbar, and then pressured them to engage with the performers, including “eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.” After Lizzo herself led a chant “goading” Davis to touch one performer’s breasts, the lawsuit says, Davis eventually did so.
But in Friday’s filings, Lizzo tour manager Molly Gordon sharply called into question that version of the evening.
“When I was at Bananenbar, I spoke with Davis. She did not say that she felt uncomfortable, that she felt forced to be there, or that she wanted to leave but felt that she could not do so,” Gordon said in the filing. “There would have been no question about whether she could leave if she was uncomfortable. I did not witness her engaging with any of the Bananenbar performers.”
Another key allegation in the August complaint was that Shirlene Quigley, the captain of Lizzo’s dance team, forced her religious beliefs on the plaintiffs and took repeated actions that made them uncomfortable, including commenting about their sexual virginity and simulating oral sex on a banana in front of them.
In sworn statements filed Friday, several members of the touring company disputed those allegations. Chawnta Van, a dancer, said the lawsuit’s description of Quigley was “not an accurate portrayal of her at all.”
“Quigley never treated anyone differently because of their religious or spiritual beliefs or actions,” Van said. “I never witnessed her bullying anyone about Jesus or about not having the same religious beliefs as she does, and that is completely contrary to who she is.”
The August complaint also detailed alleged outbursts by Lizzo, including an “excruciating re-audition” during which one dancer claims she wet herself because she feared she would be fired if she left the stage. The case also claims Lizzo repeatedly told dancers “none of their jobs were safe” and, most notably, raised “thinly veiled concerns” about Davis’ weight gain.
But according to Asia Banks, a dancer who described herself in Friday’s filings as “the biggest dancer on the tour,” she never experienced anything like that. “Lizzo always went out of her way to make me feel secure and confident in my body, including by making sure I was comfortable in every single costume for the show.”
Other statements from tour members alleged behavior and performance issues with Lizzo’s accusers. Zuri Appleby, a bass player, claimed Davis had been “lax about her performances, her hygiene and her health.” Gordon, the tour manager, said Williams had been terminated because she was “frequently late for rehearsals” and had missed a flight.
A representative for the plaintiffs did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.