State Champ Radio Legal News
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A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit accusing Donald Glover of ripping off his chart-topping Childish Gambino hit “This Is America” from an earlier song.
In a ruling Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a judge’s decision last year dismissing the lawsuit, which claimed that Glover’s 2018 song was “practically identical” to a 2016 track called “Made In America” by a rapper named Kidd Wes.
The earlier ruling said Glover had done nothing wrong because the two songs were “entirely different.” But in Friday’s decision, the appeals court rejected the case for even simpler reasons: that Wes (Emelike Nwosuocha) had failed to secure the proper copyrights on his track.
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“Nwosuocha’s problem is that his copyright registration is simply for the wrong work,” the appeals court wrote. “That distinction is important.”
Released in 2018, “This Is America” spent two weeks atop the Hot 100 and eventually won record of the year and song of the year at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. It was accompanied by a critically acclaimed music video, directed by Hiro Murai, that touched on issues of race, mass shootings and police violence.
Nwosuocha sued in May 2021, claiming there were “unmissable” similarities between the song and his own “Made In America,” including the “flow” — the cadence, rhyming schemes, rhythm and other characteristics of hip hop lyrics. But in March 2023 ruling, Judge Victor Marrero sharply disagreed with the lawsuit’s allegations.
“A cursory comparison with the challenged composition reveals that the content of the choruses is entirely different and not substantially similar,” the judge wrote. “More could be said on the ways these songs differ, but no more airtime is needed to resolve this case.”
Nwosuocha appealed that ruling, seeking to revive his lawsuit against Glover. But in rejecting that appeal on Friday, the Second Circuit ruled that it didn’t even need to decide whether the songs were similar. Instead, it said the case also failed because Nwosuocha had secured a federal copyright registration only for the recording of the song, not for the underlying composition that he claimed Glover had copied.
“The distinction between a sound recording and a musical work is not just an administrative classification,” the judge wrote. “That statutory distinction is important because sound recordings and musical works are different artistic works that can be copyrighted by different creators and are infringed in different ways.”
Barring an unlikely trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, Friday’s ruling will permanently end Nwosuocha’s lawsuit against Glover. Neither side immediately returned a request for comment on Tuesday.
A judge in Utah has set a $100,000 bond for rapper NBA YoungBoy, who faces dozens of charges involving a fraudulent prescription operation he allegedly orchestrated.
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The 24-year-old rap artist, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden, appeared Thursday (May 9) before Judge Spencer D. Walsh in a Cache County, Utah, court for the bond hearing, KUTV-TV reported.
Gaulden was arrested April 16 at his home in Huntsville, where he was on house arrest while awaiting trial on federal weapons charges. He faces 63 felonies and misdemeanors related to the fraudulent prescription operation, which included identity fraud, obtaining a prescription under false pretenses, forgery, possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, and possession of a controlled substance.
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Three others linked to the case are accused of traveling to nearby pharmacies to pick up prescriptions for pills that had been filled on bogus orders from people pretending to be real doctors.
The defense informed Walsh that the state agreed to a $100,000 bond in exchange for his waiving a preliminary hearing, where the state would have to convince a judge that a crime was committed and that it was committed by the defendant. His arraignment was set for July 1 at which time he will enter a plea, the television station reported.
“You’ll be brought over from the Cache County Jail assuming you’re still incarcerated,” Walsh said.
On April 26, additional charges related to the prescription fraud case were filed against Gaulden in Weber County, including a second-degree felony count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person and two Class A misdemeanor counts of distributing a controlled substance. He was held without bond in that case.
Authorities said Gaulden will at some point be transferred back to federal custody in the U.S. Middle District Court of Louisiana where he faces a July 15 trial on a possession of a firearm charge in Baton Rouge. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, who is presiding over the federal case, signed an order May 2 postponing the trial to a date yet to be determined as several pending motions in the case play out, court records show.
The weapons charge stems from a 2020 music video shoot. Baton Rouge police rounded up Gaulden and 15 others after swarming the video shoot and finding pistols and assault rifles hidden in the area, arrest reports indicate.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys office in Baton Rouge confirmed Thursday that when Gaulden is ultimately released from Utah state custody he’ll be detained by federal authorities, The Advocate reported.
Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday (May 10) asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that he and two co-defendants raped a 17-year-old girl in a New York recording studio in 2003, saying it was a “false and hideous claim” that was filed too late under the law.
The legal move is the latest piece of pushback from the 54-year-old hip-hop mogul and his legal team after he was subjected to several similar lawsuits and a subsequent criminal sex-trafficking investigation.
“Mr. Combs and his companies categorically deny Plaintiff’s decades-old tale against them, which has caused incalculable damage to their reputations and business standing before any evidence has been presented,” says the filing, which also names Combs-owned corporations as defendants. “Plaintiff cannot allege what day or time of year the alleged incident occurred, but miraculously remembers other salacious details, despite her alleged incapacitated condition.”
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The lawsuit was filed in December and amended in March by the woman who now lives in Canada whose name wasn’t disclosed in the court filing. She said she was in 11th grade at a high school in a Detroit suburb in 2003, when Harve Pierre, then the president of Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment record label, flew her to New York on a private jet and took her to a recording studio, where she was given drugs and alcohol until she was incapable of consenting to sex. Then, the lawsuit said, Pierre, Combs and a man she didn’t know took turns raping her.
The lawsuit included photographs of the woman sitting on Combs’ lap that she said were taken on the night in question.
The defense filing asks that the case be “dismissed now, with prejudice” — meaning it cannot be refiled — “to protect the Combs Defendants from further reputational injury and before more party and judicial resources are squandered.”
At this early stage in the lawsuit, the arguments are procedural rather than on the facts of the case.
Some of the lawsuits filed against Combs involve decades-old allegations and are among the more than 3,700 legal claims filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily suspended certain legal deadlines to give sexual assault victims a last opportunity to sue over abuse that happened years or even decades ago.
The new deadlines established by that law expired, but the suit Combs filed the motion against Friday was brought under a different law, New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. That city law also allows accusers to file civil complaints involving sexual assault claims after the statute of limitations has run out.
But Combs’ motion argues that suit was filed too late, because the city law is preempted by the state law, whose provisions mean the lawsuit needed to be filed by August of 2021 to be timely.
“New York state law trumps New York City law, without exception,” the filing says.
The amended version of the lawsuit filed in March sought to address some of these issues, but Combs’ attorneys argue that it didn’t go far enough. The judge has ruled the woman will need to reveal her name if the lawsuit moves forward after this challenge.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as some of Combs’ accusers have done.
Friday’s defense filing also criticizes the suit for including “a bolded, legally irrelevant ‘trigger warning’ calculated to focus attention on its salacious and depraved allegations.”
The public airing of allegations against Combs began with a November lawsuit by the singer Cassie, his former protege and girlfriend, containing allegations of beatings, rape and other abuse between 2005 and 2018. The suit, filed by Douglas Wigdor, the same attorney who filed the suit being challenged Friday, was settled the day after it was filed. Combs denied the allegations through his lawyer before the settlement.
More lawsuits against Combs were filed in the following months. Then on March 25, Homeland Security Investigations served search warrants on his homes in Los Angeles and Miami in a sex-trafficking investigation. His lawyer called it “a gross use of military-level force.” The investigation is continuing. Combs has not been charged.
Last month, Combs filed a motion to dismiss a suit filed by Joi Dickerson, who said she was a 19-year-old college student when Combs drugged her and sexually assaulted her.
Wigdor did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new filing. He said in a statement in December that the “depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.”
Nine of the 10 wrongful death lawsuits filed after a deadly crowd surge at the 2021 Astroworld music festival have been settled, including one that was set to go to trial this week, an attorney said Wednesday.
Jury selection had been set to begin Tuesday in the wrongful death suit filed by the family of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old Houston resident who was one of 10 people killed during the crowd crush at the Nov. 5, 2021, concert by rap superstar Travis Scott.
But Neal Manne, an attorney for Live Nation, the festival’s promoter and one of those being sued along with Scott, said during a court hearing Wednesday that only one wrongful death lawsuit remained pending and the other nine have been settled, including the one filed by Dubiski’s family.
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Terms of the settlements were confidential and attorneys declined to comment after the court hearing because of a gag order in the case.
The one wrongful death lawsuit that remains pending was filed by the family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest person killed during the concert. Attorneys in the litigation were set to meet next week to discuss when the lawsuit filed by Blount’s family could be set for trial.
“This case is ready for trial,” Scott West, an attorney for Blount’s family, said in court.
But Manne said he and the lawyers for other defendants being sued were not ready.
State District judge Kristen Hawkins said she planned to discuss the Blount case at next week’s hearing along with potential trials related to the injury cases filed after the deadly concert.
Hawkins said that if the Blount family’s lawsuit is not settled, she is inclined to schedule that as the next trial instead of an injury case.
More than 4,000 plaintiffs filed hundreds of lawsuits after the concert. Manne said about 2,400 injury cases remain pending.
The announcement that nearly all of the wrongful death lawsuits have been settled came after the trial in Dubiski’s case was put on hold last week. Apple Inc., which livestreamed Scott’s concert and was one of the more than 20 defendants being sued by Dubiski’s family, had appealed a court ruling that denied its request to be dismissed from the case. An appeals court granted Apple a stay in the case.
In the days after the trial stay, attorneys for Dubiski’s family settled their lawsuit with all the defendants in the case, including Apple, Scott and Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company.
At least four wrongful death lawsuits had previously been settled and announced in court records. But Wednesday was the first time that lawyers in the litigation had given an update that nine of the 10 wrongful death lawsuits had been resolved.
Lawyers for Dubiski’s family as well as attorneys representing the various other plaintiffs have alleged in court filings that the deaths and hundreds of injuries at the concert were caused by negligent planning and a lack of concern over capacity and safety at the event.
Those killed, who ranged in age from 9 to 27, died from compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being crushed by a car.
Scott, Live Nation and the others who’ve been sued have denied these claims, saying safety was their number one concern. They said what happened could not have been foreseen.
After a police investigation, a grand jury last year declined to indict Scott, along with five others connected to the festival.
A woman who filed a lawsuit accusing former Recording Academy boss Neil Portnow of rape is now moving to drop her case, citing concerns that her name will be revealed and a dispute with her own lawyers.
In a letter filed Sunday without the help of her attorneys, the Jane Doe accuser told a Manhattan federal judge she was “unable to proceed with the case” because of “fear of potential grave harm” if her name is disclosed in court documents, as Portnow’s attorneys have formally requested.
“The circumstances surrounding this case have created a genuine concern for my safety, and emotional well-being,” the woman wrote in the letter, obtained by Billboard. “Dismissing the case would alleviate this fear and allow me to move forward without unnecessary risks.”
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A day after the unusual letter, the woman’s lawyer moved to withdraw from the case immediately, saying the relationship with his client had “deteriorated beyond repair.”
“Unbeknownst to counsel, plaintiff filed a letter on this court’s docket requesting voluntary dismissal of her case,” Doe’s attorney Jeffrey Anderson wrote. “Plaintiff’s action in filing it demonstrates the irreconcilable differences that provide a basis for withdrawal.”
The news of Sunday’s letter was first reported Wednesday by the New York Times.
The unnamed woman sued Portnow in November, claiming that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2018. She also named the Recording Academy as a defendant, saying that the group’s negligence had enabled Portnow’s conduct. The case was part of a wave of sexual abuse lawsuits filed against powerful men in the music industry in late 2023.
But on Sunday, she sent a letter directly to the judge without the aid of her attorneys, announcing that she wanted to drop the case. The Jane Doe said that it was “impossible for me to proceed with the case in all aspects” and that dismissing the case would be in “the best interest of all parties.”
The sudden reversal appears to have been sparked by efforts from Portnow’s attorneys to force her to reveal her name. In an April filing, his lawyers claimed that she wanted to “use anonymity as a shield” while embarking on a “public relations campaign to destroy Mr. Portnow’s reputation.”
A previous ruling, when the case had originally been filed in state court, had allowed the Jane Doe to proceed under the pseudonym. But Portnow’s lawyers said that ruling had no binding effect on the case after it had been moved to federal court in January.
In a response last week, Doe’s lawyers argued that disclosure motion should be denied. Citing his client’s “fears of stigma and emotional distress,” Anderson warned that “public identification puts plaintiff at risk of retaliatory harm” and could deter other abuse victims from coming forward.
But in her letter to the judge on Sunday, Doe said that her lawyers had privately disclosed to her on April 26 that they believed Portnow’s demand to reveal her would be granted. She quoted from emails in which another attorney told her: “Our view is that they will prevail on that motion and your name will be made public which will cause harm to you and your reputation.” Anderson allegedly wrote that the move to federal court meant that “your name can no longer be protected” and she faced “grave further harm.”
Doe also claimed that Anderson had informed her that he would no longer be representing her in the case, telling her in a May 1 letter that “the best route would be for you to find a new attorney.” She warned the judge that he had “ignored” her requests for more information, and that his public opposition filing to Portnow’s disclosure demands “did not accurately reflect my position.”
“This misrepresentation has significant implications for the case,” Doe wrote in her direct letter to the judge on Sunday. “I am deeply concerned about its impact.”
Anderson did not return a request for comment from Billboard on Wednesday.
In court filings on Tuesday, attorneys for both Portnow and the Recording Academy asked the judge for more time to consider how to proceed after Doe’s request for voluntary dismissal. Neither immediately responded to requests for comment.
The dispute in the Portnow case comes two months after a different federal judge ruled that one of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ accusers would have to reveal her name to proceed in her case. In a February ruling, the judge acknowledged that disclosure “could have a significant impact,” but that allowing cases to proceed under a pseudonym in the U.S. court system was “the exception and not the rule” and that “generalized, uncorroborated” concerns about privacy were not enough.
50 Cent has filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex Daphne Joy over her public accusations that he raped and physically abused her, calling them a “calculated attack” of false allegations designed to destroy his reputation.
In a case filed Monday in Houston court, the rapper (real name Curtis Jackson) says Joy (Daphne Joy Narvaez) made her claims as retaliation after the rapper sought legal action to take sole custody of their son in the wake of a lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs that accused Joy of being a “sex worker.”
50 Cent’s lawyers say the allegations against him were nothing more than an attempt to “destroy his personal and business reputation, harm Jackson’s commercial and business interests, negatively affect his custody case, and prevent him from seeing his son.”
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“As apparently intended by Narvaez, Jackson has been subjected to extensive public ridicule, hatred, and contempt,” his attorneys write in the complaint, obtained by Billboard. “Jackson brings this action for defamation…in order to vindicate his rights and protect his reputation from Narvaez’s calculated attack.”
Included as an exhibit to Monday’s lawsuit is a letter the rapper’s attorneys sent to Joy last month, demanding that she remove the posts and issue a retraction. They say she responded by demanding “millions of dollars” and for 50 Cent to drop his custody case in return for removal of the post.
“Narvaez refuses to take down or remove the defamatory post unless he complies with extortive demands, including the payment of large sums of money and forfeiting his meritorious custody action,” Jackson’s lawyers write.
Joy could not immediately be reached for comment.
The dispute dates back to March, when Joy’s name was mentioned in a wide-ranging sexual abuse lawsuit filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs by Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones. In that complaint, Jones claimed that Combs had “bragged” about paying Joy and other women a “monthly stipend” for sex.
Days later, Joy posted a scathing statement about Jackson to Instagram: “Let’s put the real focus on your true evil actions of raping me and physically abusing me,” she wrote at the time. “You are no longer my oppressor and my God will handle you from this point on.”
In his lawsuit on Monday, Jackson says that Joy’s blistering accusations were a response to his decision to “take legal action” to seek custody of their 11-year old son Sire in the wake of the lawsuit against Diddy. “Upon learning of the troubling allegations in the Combs litigation, Jackson came to the reasonable conclusion that it was not in his child’s best interest for Narvaez to have full custody,” the suit states.
Courts have made it difficult for “public figures” like a famous rapper to sue for defamation. They must prove that someone like Joy made her statements with “actual malice” – meaning she knew they were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. But in Monday’s complaint, 50 Cent’s lawyers say Joy’s “unequivocally false” statements meet that difficult standard.
“Narvaez knows that Jackson did not rape or physically abuse her, yet she knowingly published the false statements to her almost 2 million followers on Instagram,” 50’s lawyers write. “Narvaez published the defamatory post, and refuses to remove it, out of sheer hatred and ill will toward Jackson.”
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: A deep-dive into whether rappers like Kendrick Lamar and Drake can sue each other for defamation over wild allegations in diss tracks; a lawsuit from TikTok over an “unprecedented” law banning the app from the U.S.; Britney Spears settles her divorce case; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Defamatory Dissing?
Over the weekend, as Kendrick Lamar and Drake exchanged diss tracks filled with wild accusations, spectators on social media began to wonder if either rapper could be setting themselves up for legal trouble: “Has anyone ever filed a defamation lawsuit over a diss track before?” joked Matt Ford, a legal reporter at the New Republic, on Saturday night.An actual lawsuit seems unlikely, for the simple reason that any rapper responding to a diss track with a team of lawyers would be committing reputational suicide. But the discussion got us thinking: Could a rapper like Drake or Kendrick sue over the kind of scathing insults we saw this weekend?While diss tracks filled with extremely specific invective (and we mean extremely) could certainly lead to a libel lawsuit in theory, legal experts tell Billboard that such a case would face not just legal challenges but also practical problems. Go read our full story here.
Other top stories this week…
TIKTOK SUES US OVER BAN – TikTok and parent company ByteDance filed a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning recently-passed legislation in the U.S. requiring the Chinese company to sell the popular app or face a national ban. The companies called the legislation an “unprecedented” and unconstitutional action aimed at “singling out” one company and “silencing” more than 170 million Americans who use TikTok.BRITNEY DIVORCE FINALIZED – Britney Spears reached a settlement to finalize her divorce from husband Sam Asghari, resolving their 14-month marriage according to the terms of “a written agreement” – likely a reference to a reported “ironclad prenup” that Asghari signed before their 2022 wedding.ASTROWORLD TRIAL DELAYED – The first civil trial for Travis Scott, Live Nation and others over their alleged roles in the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival had been set to kick off this week, but the proceedings were postponed due to a tricky dispute over whether Apple – which aired an exclusive livestream of the fateful concert – can potentially be held liable.TOMMY LEE ABUSE CASE TOSSED – A Los Angeles judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee of sexually assaulting a woman in a helicopter in 2003, ruling that she had failed to allege any kind of “cover-up” – a key requirement under the California statute she cited to file the lawsuit. It ain’t over yet, though: The judge gave her a chance to refile an amended complaint within 20 days.MORGAN WALLEN UPDATE – The criminal case against Morgan Wallen for allegedly throwing a chair off the roof of a six-story Nashville bar is moving forward after an initial court hearing. The star, who did not appear in person and has not yet entered a plea, is facing three felony counts of reckless endangerment over the incident, in which the chair landed just feet from several police officers standing on the street below. AI SENATE HEARING – Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl and other industry bigwigs were on Capitol Hill last week for a Senate hearing on the NO FAKES Act, a proposed federal law that would allow individuals to sue over the use of their name, likeness or voice without permission in “digital replicas” like AI-powered deepfakes. Go read Kristin Robinson’s entire breakdown of the hearing here.NICK PRODUCER LIBEL SUIT – Former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider filed a defamation lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery and others behind an explosive documentary called Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, alleging that the series wrongly implied that he had sexually abused the child actors he worked with.
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TikTok and parent company ByteDance have filed a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning recently-passed legislation requiring the Chinese company to sell the popular app or face a national ban, arguing that it violates the First Amendment.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in D.C. federal court, TikTok and Byte Dance called the law an “unprecedented” and unconstitutional action aimed at “singling out” one company and “silencing” more than 170 million Americans who use TikTok.
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” lawyers for the two companies wrote. “There are good reasons why Congress has never before enacted a law like this.”
The lawsuit came just week after President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which requires that ByteDance either divest ownership of TikTok by Jan. 19 or face a national ban on the app. Proponents have argued that TikTok presents a national security threat because of its connections to the Chinese government and access to millions of Americans.
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In Tuesday’s complaint, TikTok argued that such national security concerns were not sufficient to override the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. The company’s attorneys said lawmakers had failed to “articulate any threat posed by TikTok” and had cited only “speculative concerns,” meaning they were making an “extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” without clear reason.
“If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote.
The new lawsuit came just days after TikTok – an increasingly influential part of the music industry ecosystem – reached an agreement with Universal Music Group to end a months-long standoff over rights to the music giant’s catalog.
In the new complaint, TikTok argued that it had already spent billions of dollars addressing the potential security risks cited by lawmakers, and had reached voluntary agreements with executive agencies like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to safeguard user data and the integrity against foreign government influence.
“Congress tossed this tailored agreement aside, in favor of the politically expedient and punitive approach of targeting for disfavor one publisher and speaker,” TikTok’s attorneys wrote. “Congress must abide by the dictates of the Constitution even when it claims to be protecting against national security risk.”
TikTok has already had success in court over U.S. efforts to ban the app. Citing the First Amendment, a federal judge in 2020 blocked former President Donald J. Trump from carrying out an executive order barring TikTok from app stores. And last year, a federal judge in Montana overturned a law in that state banning the app, ruling that legislation not only violated free speech, but also encroached on federal authority to regulate foreign relations.
After an ugly weekend of diss-track crossfire, the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake now features unproven accusations of spousal abuse, drug use and even pedophilia. Those claims might be “slander” to many people, but are they defamatory? We asked the legal experts.
The long-simmering dispute between the two hip hop heavyweights went thermonuclear on Friday, when Drake dropped a track claiming Lamar had abused his fiancée. Minutes later, Lamar fired back with accusations about addictions, hidden children and plastic surgery. The next day he dropped another song accusing Drake and others of pedophilia.
With the allegations getting wilder by the minute, spectators on social media began to wonder if either rapper – but particularly Kendrick – could be setting themselves up for more than just another scathing response: “Has anyone ever filed a defamation lawsuit over a diss track before?” joked Matt Ford, a legal reporter at the New Republic, on Saturday night.
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An actual lawsuit seems unlikely, for the simple reason that any rapper responding to a diss track with a team of lawyers would be committing reputational suicide. But let’s play it out: Could a rapper like Drake or Kendrick sue over the kind of scathing insults we saw this weekend?
While diss tracks filled with extremely specific invective (and we mean extremely) could certainly lead to a libel lawsuit in theory, legal experts tell Billboard that such a case would face not just legal challenges but also practical problems. First and foremost? That the accuser would open themselves up to painful discovery by opposing lawyers.
“Any plaintiff suing for defamation is putting their entire life and reputation on the line,” says Dori Hanswirth, a veteran litigator who heads the media law practice at the law firm Arnold & Porter. “If someone decided to sue over a statement that they preyed upon underage women, for example, then that person’s entire dating history would be fair game in the litigation.”
While the term “slander” gets thrown around on the internet a lot these days, actual legal defamation is pretty hard to prove in America, thanks to the First Amendment and its robust protections for free speech. Winning a case requires that an accuser show that a statement about them was factually false; mere statements of opinion don’t count, and neither do bombastic exaggerations.
“The public … has to believe that the speaker is being serious, and not just hurling insults in a diss fight,” Hanswirth says. “If the statements are not taken literally, then they are rhetorical hyperbole and not considered to be defamatory. The context of this song-by-song grudge match tends to support the idea that this is rhetorical, and a creative way to beef with a rival.”
Another legal roadblock is that both Drake and Kendrick are so-called public figures — a status that makes it very hard to win a defamation lawsuit. Under landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedents, a public figure must show that their alleged defamer acted with “actual malice,” meaning they knew their statement was false or they acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
In practice, the “actual malice” rule has made it nearly impossible for prominent people to sue for libel. And that’s by design. Without strong protections, defamation lawsuits would allow government officials, business leaders and other powerful people to harass and silence anyone who criticizes them, stifling free speech about important public issues.
“The Supreme Court has held that this heightened standard always applies where the plaintiff is a public figure, and it is designed to promote robust expression and debate,” said Adam I. Rich, a music and First Amendment attorney at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.
So, what’s the verdict? No matter how ugly the insults between Drake and Kendrick, it seems like the beef between them is probably going to remain in the form of verse rather than legal briefs.
“As both a lawyer and a fan,” Rich says, “I hope Drake and Kendrick turn the heat down and play the next round out in the studio, not the courtroom.”
A Los Angeles judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee of sexually assaulting a woman in a helicopter in 2003, ruling that her case was filed too late.
The case against Lee, launched last year by an anonymous Jane Doe accuser, was filed under a newly enacted California law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for years-old sexual assaults – one of several such laws passed around the country in recent years.
But in a decision issued Monday, Judge Holly J. Fujie ruled that Lee’s accuser had failed to show that Lee’s alleged assault had been followed by any kind of “cover-up” – a key requirement under the provision she cited.
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“The court finds that plaintiff has not pled facts sufficient to support the theory of the necessary ‘cover up’ because plaintiff has not asserted facts evidencing defendants’ concerted effort to hide evidence relating to sexual assault,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff instead makes vague allegations that the court finds insufficient to support the revival of a claim.”
Though the ruling is a setback for Lee’s accuser, the case is not yet over. The judge gave her and her attorneys 20 days to file an updated version of her complaint if she has additional information that would fix the flaws in her case. Her attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
In her December complaint, the Jane Doe plaintiff claimed she had been “lured under false pretenses” by Lee’s personal helicopter pilot into taking a ride from San Diego to Los Angeles in February 2003. Once onboard, she claimed that Lee and the pilot “consumed several alcoholic beverages, smoked marijuana, and snorted cocaine” before the rock star assaulted her.
“Tommy Lee then proceeded to sexually assault plaintiff by forcibly groping, kissing, penetrating her with his fingers, and attempting to force her to perform oral copulation,” her lawyers wrote. “As a result of Tommy Lee’s sexual assault, Plaintiff has suffered severe emotional, physical, and psychological distress.”
The case, over an incident that allegedly occurred more than two decades ago, was filed under the Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act – a California law that created a three-year window starting last year for alleged survivors to file sexual assault lawsuits that would normally be barred by the statute of limitations.
The case against Lee was one of many cases filed during the “look-back windows” created by similar statutes, including New York’s Adult Survivors Act. Just before that law expired in November, a flood of years-old abuse cases hit the courts, most notably against Sean “Diddy” Combs.
But such laws have strict requirements. In the case of the Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, an alleged victim must show that the defendant “engaged in a cover up or attempted a cover up,” meaning a “concerted effort to hide evidence relating to a sexual assault or other inappropriate conduct” or conduct that “incentivizes individuals to remain silent.”
In her complaint, Lee’s accuser claimed that the drummer and other defendants “engaged in a concerted effort to prevent information or evidence of such sexual assaults from being made public or disclosed to anyone.” But in her ruling on Monday, Judge Fujie said that simply spelling out the statute’s requirement was not enough.
“These allegations are conclusory in nature and do not allege specific actions directed to plaintiff,” the judge wrote. “As such, plaintiff’s action as alleged is effectively time-barred.”
In a statement to Billboard, Lee’s attorney Sasha Frid said: “We applaud the court’s decision. The court got it right in finding that the plaintiff cannot assert a claim against Tommy Lee. From the outset, Mr. Lee has vehemently denied these false and bogus accusations.”
