Legal News
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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: Billboard reveals its yearly list of the top lawyers in the music industry; experts weigh in on the recent copyright infringement lawsuit against the Rolling Stones; Tory Lanez asks for a new trial following his conviction for shooting Megan Thee Stallion; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: The Lawyers Behind The Music Biz
Billboard revealed its yearly list of top attorneys in the music industry this week, breaking down not only the best dealmakers and litigators at the country’s elite law firms, but also the key players from in-house legal departments at record labels, streamers, concert promoters and more.
Among other things, we asked this year’s honorees to name the pressing concern facing the music business in 2023. One of the most common responses from the folks who get paid to worry about future legal problems? The rise of so-called generative artificial intelligence tools like the popular ChatGPT.
“Those of us representing human artists and songwriters will have to stay ahead of the curve to ensure our clients have the opportunity to evolve in tandem with technology,” said Farrah A. Usmani, an attorney at the firm Nixon Peabody.
To read this year’s full list of Top Music Lawyers – featuring dozens of names with short blurbs on why they matter in 2023’s music industry – go read the entire thing here.
Other top stories…
NO SATISFACTION LIKELY FOR STONES ACCUSER – I took a deep dive last week into the recent copyright lawsuit claiming that the Rolling Stones copied their 2020 song “Living In A Ghost Town” from two little-known tracks, chatting with musicologists and litigators to understand the allegations and whether they’re likely to succeed. Go read what they said here.
MORE ROLLING STONES LITIGATION – In unrelated news, a new trademark lawsuit was filed that centers on the famed “tongue and lips” logo used by the Stones since 1971. The case was filed by a clothing chain that says it was threatened by a UMG-owned merch company with “unfounded” infringement litigation after it featured a similar design on t-shirts. (The band itself is not involved in the litigation and is not accused of any wrongdoing.)
TORY LANEZ DEMANDS NEW TRIAL – Attorneys for the rapper asked a Los Angeles judge for a new trial after he was convicted in December in the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, calling the guilty verdict a “miscarriage of justice.” Such requests are standard procedure for someone who has lost at trial, but they are very rarely granted.
NICK CARTER COUNTERSUIT MOVES AHEAD – A Las Vegas judge refused to dismiss a countersuit filed by Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter against Shannon “Shay” Ruth, a woman who has accused him of rape. Ruth claimed that Carter’s defamation case was a so-called SLAPP suit that aimed only to “harass and intimidate” her, but Judge Nancy Alff was not convinced.
COACHELLA SETTLES ‘COACHILLIN’ LAWSUIT – The organizers of the annual festival agreed to drop a trademark lawsuit against Coachillin Business Park, a development site located just a few miles to the north of the grounds. Under the terms of the settlement, Coachillin said it would “cease any and all use” of the name going forward.
Coachella has agreed to drop its trademark lawsuit against a nearby California business park that called itself “Coachillin,” after the group said it would “cease any and all use” of the name.
The festival’s organizers (owned by AEG and its subsidiary Goldenvoice) filed the case in October against Coachillin Business Park, a planned development site located just a few miles north of the Empire Polo Club. They claimed the project was trying to free-ride on the famous name of the nearby festival.
In settlement papers filed Friday, Coachillin agreed to drop all use of the name on the internet with 45 days, and to stop using it entirely within 90 days. That means not only the name of the overall site, but related names like a “Coachchill Inn” hotel.
Any monetary terms of the settlement were not disclosed in public filings. Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for more information on the terms of the agreement.
The lawsuit was part of an aggressive recent campaign from Coachella to protect its name against would-be imitators. In 2021, the festival sued Live Nation for selling tickets to a nearby event called “Coachella Day One 22,” and last year it filed a similar trademark case against a West African company over an event called “Afrochella.” Then in February, Coachella sued the creator of “Moechella,” a Washington D.C.-based music event centered on go-go music.
On its website, Coachillin described itself as an “Industrial Cultivation & Ancillary Canna-Business Park,” a proposed 160-acre site aimed at businesses in the cannabis industry. In addition to cultivation spaces, the group said the site will also feature a hotel, an amphitheater and other amenities.
In its October lawsuit, Coachella said it had “no objection” with any of that – except for the name, which they say is commonly used on social media as slang term for spending time at the music festival.
“The public has come to associate the phrase ‘Coachillin’ to refer to the Coachella Festival and plaintiffs, not merely to refer to the Coachella Valley—and certainly not Coachillin Holdings or its Coachillin Business Park,” wrote attorneys for the festival. “Defendants must use a distinctive name that does not infringe or trade on the goodwill of plaintiffs’ reputation.”
Movie star Leonardo DiCaprio testified in federal court Monday morning (April 3) as part of a trial involving international money laundering, bribery and a prominent rap artist.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel — a founding member of the iconic 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees — is accused of funneling money from a fugitive Malaysian financer through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Five years later, prosecutors say he tried to squelch an investigation into that same financer under former President Donald Trump’s administration.
At the heart of the case is Low Taek Jho, usually known as Jho Low. He is accused of masterminding an international money laundering and bribery scheme that stole billions from the Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB.
DiCaprio’s connection with the case comes from his yearslong relationship with Low, who was one of the primary financers of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Low is currently a fugitive but has maintained his innocence.
According to the charges, Michel essentially became a conduit for Low’s pilfered millions and his attempts to influence the U.S. government. Prosecutors allege that from June to November 2012, Low directed more than $21.6 million to be moved from foreign entities to Michel’s accounts in order to funnel money into the 2012 presidential election. They say Michel then paid about 20 straw donors and conduits so they could make the donations in their names and conceal where the money actually came from, according to the indictment.
DiCaprio testified that he met and befriended Low at a birthday party in Las Vegas in 2010. “I understood him to be a huge businessman with many different connections in Abu Dhabi and Malaysia,” he said.
The 48-year-old Oscar winner answered questions on the witness stand calmly — occasionally deferring to a fuzzy memory on some details and dates. In addition to his relationship with Low, DiCaprio said he had known the defendant Michel since sometime in the 1990s when they met backstage after a Fugees concert.
Low was known for hosting lavish star-studded parties and group vacations on his private jet to events like the World Cup in Brazil. DiCaprio recounted one particular junket that involved flying to Australia to celebrate New Year’s Eve, then flying to Las Vegas to celebrate a second time in one day. Michel was present on some of these trips, DiCaprio said.
Low became a regular contributor to DiCaprio’s charitable foundation, and eventually Low floated the idea of providing the primary financing for The Wolf of Wall Street.
DiCaprio said he had Low’s funding and legitimacy carefully vetted before entering into a business relationship.
“I was given the green light by my team as well as my studio,” he said. “He was a legitimate business person wanting to invest in the movie.”
DiCaprio also recalled a “casual conversation” with Low in which Low told him he intended to make a large contribution to Obama’s re-election campaign.
“It was a significant sum — something to the tune of $20-30 million,” he testified. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”
When the Rolling Stones released “Living In A Ghost Town” in 2020, a lot had changed in the eight years since the legendary rock band had last put out a new song. Streaming music had become dominant, the UK had exited the European Union and a global pandemic had taken grip.
It had also seemingly become more common for the creators of hit songs to face lawsuits. In the wake of a multimillion-dollar verdict in 2015 against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over “Blurred Lines,” a slew of major stars had faced similar copyright infringement cases over some of their biggest hits – including Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber and Dua Lipa.
So it should have perhaps come as no surprise to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards when, last month, they were hit with a lawsuit claiming they’d illegally borrowed key parts of “Ghost Town.” Sergio Garcia Fernandez, who performs under the name Angelslang, alleged that they had “misappropriated many of the recognizable and key protected elements” from his 2006 song “So Sorry,” as well as his 2007 tune “Seed of God.” (Read the full complaint here.)
But such lawsuits, while plentiful, often face long odds. In just the past month, similar song-theft cases against Donald Glover (over his Childish Gambino chart-topper “This Is America”) and Nickelback (over the band’s 2005 hit “Rock Star”) have both been dismissed at the earliest stage of litigation. In Glover’s case, a federal judge ruled last week that the lyrics of the two songs were “entirely different.” In Nickelback’s dispute, another federal judge ruled the week prior that the case at times “borders on the absurd.”
And, according to legal and music experts, the new lawsuit against the Stones likely faces a similar fate.
“Living in a Ghost Town,” a blues-rock tune with some reggae vibes, does sound similar to “So Sorry” and “Seed of God.” Fernandez claims that’s because the new song borrowed key features from his songs, including the “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts [and] the electric bass line parts.”
But according to Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist and a professor at Berklee College of Music, “Ghost Town” flatly does not include those elements from Fernandez’s songs. Full stop.
“It simply doesn’t,” Bennett says. “These elements are not the same when compared — all the notes and chords are very obviously different. It’s significant that the complaint doesn’t contain any music notation, because a simple side by side transcription would demonstrate the dissimilarity.”
So then why do the songs sound similar? Bennett says it’s because they share an overall vibe – based on mid-tempo rock grooves in the key of A minor – that’s been ubiquitous in rock and blues since the beginning. Without much digging, he pointed to at least four other songs that sound pretty similar, including B.B. King’s rendition of the “The Thrill Is Gone.” But those commonplace musical tropes cannot be monopolized by one band under copyright law.
“The similarities we hear aren’t protectable elements, and certainly not the intellectual property of Mr. Fernandez,” Bennett said. “The Stones didn’t copy from Fernandez, because they didn’t need to; they’ve been playing grooves like this for a very long time, as have many others.”
Beyond such musical problems, the case against the Stones also potentially suffers from a simpler legal flaw.
In any copyright lawsuit, an accuser needs to show that the alleged infringer had “access” to their work in order to copy it. In cases involving big songs – like in the looming trial against Sheeran over Marvin Gaye’s iconic “Let’s Get It On” – a plaintiff can easily argue that the song was so widely-available that the defendant obviously heard it. But the case against the Stones involve songs of far less renown; when the lawsuit was first filed, the allegedly-copied “So Sorry” listed less than 1000 streams on Spotify.
Faced with that situation, Fernandez instead aimed to directly show how the Stones might have heard the song. In his complaint, his lawyers wrote that he gave a demo CD to “an immediate family member” of Jagger, who then allegedly confirmed in writing that the songs had “a sound The Rolling Stones would be interested in using.”
But according to James Sammataro, a veteran copyright litigator and the co-chair of the music group at at the law firm Pryor Cashman, those arguments fall well short of what’s required under law.
He noted that the complaint “conspicuously” failed to name that family member, and also did not directly claim that they had actually handed the song off to Jagger or had been involved in creating “Ghost Town.”
“A charitable read of the complaint is that plaintiff purportedly gave his demo to a family member of Jagger who might have passed along the demo to Jagger, but that plaintiff have no idea whether it actually happened,” Sammataro wrote. “Such speculative allegations are far too attenuated to infer a reasonable possibility of access. If there was a strong claim of access, the plaintiff would have presumably pled it.”
A Las Vegas judge on Wednesday (March 29) reportedly refused to dismiss a countersuit filed by Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter against a woman who has accused him of rape, rejecting her arguments that he’s merely using the case to “harass and intimidate” her.
Shannon “Shay” Ruth, who sued Carter in December over allegations that he raped her after a 2001 concert, had asked the judge to dismiss his defamation countersuit under Nevada’s so-called anti-SLAPP law — a statute designed to prevent lawsuits that are filed as retaliation against free speech.
But at a court hearing Wednesday, Judge Nancy Alff denied that anti-SLAPP motion and allowed Carter’s countersuit to move forward, according to a report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Carter reportedly appeared in court with his lawyers on Wednesday, though Ruth was not physically present.
Ruth sued Carter in December, claiming he raped her when she was 17 years old following a 2001 concert in Washington state. Now 39, Ruth says she waited more than 20 years to come forward because she was afraid of retaliation.
“He told plaintiff she would go to jail if she told anyone what happened between them,” Ruth’s lawyers wrote at the time. “He said that he was Nick Carter, and that he had the power to do that. Due to his various threats, plaintiff did not report Carter’s crimes for many years.”
Carter fired back with a countersuit in February, claiming he’d been the victim of a “five-year conspiracy” that aimed to “to harass, defame and extort” him by exploiting the #MeToo movement. He said Ruth was “a vulnerable and highly impressionable individual” who was manipulated into making false accusations by Melissa Schuman Henschel — a former member of the teen-pop group Dream who previously accused Carter of assaulting her in 2003.
Weeks later, Ruth’s attorneys labeled Carter’s lawsuit a SLAPP suit, saying the defamation allegations had been brought with “no other purpose than to harass, intimate, and potentially silence plaintiff.”
“He seeks to use his wealth and celebrity status to outlast plaintiff,” Ruth’s lawyers wrote. “All while hiding behind being the ‘victim’ of the ‘#MeToo’ movement and the preposterous notion that plaintiff is only seeking attention and publicity.”
Wednesday’s ruling, which denied Ruth’s motion, came after Carter’s attorneys submitted detailed arguments backing up their contention that Ruth’s allegations were false and that his allegations of a conspiracy were plausible. His filings included testimony from 12 witnesses who supported his side of the story, including one who called Ruth’s story “factually impossible.”
A founding member of the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees was enmeshed in political conspiracies involving millions of dollars in foreign money under two different U.S. presidents, federal prosecutors said as his trial got underway with opening statements Thursday (March 30).
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel is accused of funneling money from a fugitive Malaysian financer through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Five years later, prosecutors say he tried to squelch an investigation into the financier and persuade then-President Donald Trump’s administration to return to China a “vocal critic of the government.”
“This is a case about foreign money, foreign influence and concealment,” said prosecutor Nicole Rae Lockhart. Michel pocketed over $100 million in the saga involving “political intrigue, backroom dealing … burner phones and lies,” she said.
Michel’s lawyers have previously said he is innocent and “extremely disappointed” in the charges, but the defense decided to wait to give its opening statement in the trial that’s expected to last weeks.
The Department of Justice says Michel conspired with Low Taek Jho, usually known as Jho Low. The fugitive financier is accused of masterminding a money-laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from the Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB.
Looted money paid for jewelry and luxury art and helped finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.
Low was once known for his business and social ties to American celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Leonardo DiCaprio, a possible witness in the case. During the 2012 presidential campaign, prosecutors allege Low directed more than $20 million to Michel, who concealed its origin by giving the money to straw donors to give to the Obama campaign. He later tried to lean on the donors to keep them from talking to investigators, Lockhart said.
In 2017, prosecutors say, the Grammy-winning rapper worked with a Republican “fixer” to try and shut down a U.S. investigation into Low and embezzlement from the Malaysian fund. He’s also accused of pushing the Trump administration to send a Chinese person who had fled to the U.S. back to China.
“It almost worked,” Lockhart said. “The defendant wanted money and was willing to break any laws necessary to get paid.”
The Justice Department last year announced charges against Low and two former Goldman Sachs bankers in the money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered money from the fund, which was created to spur economic development projects in Malaysia. Low is a fugitive but has maintained his innocence.
One of the bankers, Roger Ng, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this month for his role in the scheme.
The mother of Flo Rida‘s six-year-old son has filed a lawsuit against the owners of a rental property after Zohar P. Dillard was seriously injured in a March 4 fall from a fifth-floor window of her New Jersey apartment building.
According to People, Dillard’s mother, Alexis Adams, is named as a plaintiff in the negligence suit — along with her special needs son — in documents submitted to the Superior Court of New Jersey on Monday (March 27) against Pitch Perfect 74, LLC, Goldberg Management and others. The legal action came after the child was reportedly seriously injured in a fall in which he landed on a patch of concrete below the window; a spokesperson for Goldberg had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the suit at press time.
A spokesperson for Flo Rida (born Tramar Lacel Dillard) did not return Billboard‘s request for comment at press time; the rapper is reportedly not a party to the lawsuit.
According to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by New Jersey’s Daily Voice, Zohar suffered a shattered pelvis, left metatarsal fractures, a grade 3 liver laceration, internal bleeding and collapsed lungs in the incident and he remained in the ICU as of Wednesday (March 29). “As a single mom to a special needs child, this feels like a nightmare,” Adams told the Voice. “My heart is broken into a million pieces. It is devastating to see my child go through such pain and trauma knowing that this could’ve been avoided.”
Adams’ attorney, Steven P. Haddad, demanded a jury trial and claims the building’s managers are at fault for maintaining the building in a “negligent, careless and reckless manner creating foreseeable and dangerous conditions,” according to People. The suit claims that management installed “incorrect sized guards” on the windows on the fifth-floor apartment, “thereby breaching their duty of care.” At press time Haddad had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the filing.
The suit is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages for Dillard’s current and future medical bills, legal feels and any ongoing and future medical and mental pain and suffering.
The Rolling Stones’ famed “tongue and lips” logo is at the center of a new federal lawsuit, launched by a small clothing chain that says it was unfairly threatened by Universal Music Group’s Bravado merch company with “unfounded” infringement litigation over a similar logo.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday (March 29), apparel retailer Simply Southern claimed it had received a cease-and-desist letter from Bravado, a unit of UMG that sells licensed merchandise for the Stones and dozens of other major artists. The letter allegedly took aim at T-shirts that featured a “disembodied mouth,” claiming they were confusingly similar to the iconic logo.
But lawyers for Simply Southern say its apparel designs were “clearly and demonstrably different,” and they want a federal judge to rule that the company “has not infringed Bravado’s asserted intellectual property rights.”
“Simply Southern’s mouth images show many elements that are very different from Bravado’s asserted tongue/lips image,” the company wrote in its complaint. “For example, Simply Southern’s images have a more plump lower lip, more square teeth, and a wider and more open mouth when compared to Bravado’s asserted image.”
A representative for Bravado declined to comment. The Rolling Stones themselves are not named in the lawsuit and are not accused of any wrongdoing; a rep for the band did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.
Called “the most famous logo in rock ’n’ roll” by the New York Times, the “tongue and lips” image was created in 1970 by John Pasche, a London art student who had been commissioned by the band to create a poster for its upcoming European tour. The design was then tweaked slightly by designer Craig Braun before it appeared in its final version on the back cover of the band’s 1971 album Sticky Fingers.
Since then, the Stones logo has appeared countless times — on music releases, T-shirts, stickers, posters and even as the stage for the band’s halftime performance during Super Bowl XL.
According to Wednesday’s lawsuit, Bravado sent Simply Southern a letter on March 1, claiming to be the exclusive licensee to sell Rolling Stones merchandise. The lawyers for Bravado warned Simply Southern that its products were “confusingly similar” to the tongue and lips design, and that such offending merchandise infringed the band’s trademarks.
The complaint filed in federal court (available in its entirety here) includes images Simply Southern’s two offending logos. Both appear visually similar to the Stones logo, but with differences. One is highly similar in shape, but features a different pink-and-leopard print color scheme; the other features the same red color scheme as the Stones logo, but includes a different orientation with different tongue placement.
From Simply Southern’s perspective, that’s enough difference to avoid liability for trademark infringement.
“Because the mouth is an inherently expressive body part, subtle changes in shape and positioning result in markedly different interpretations of emotional expression,” the company wrote. “Bravado’s asserted image is mostly devoid of emotion but has slight hints of either playfulness or defiance. By contrast, Simply Southern’s images are deeply expressive.”
Read Simply Southern’s full complaint here:
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 court ruling on R. Kelly’s music royalties offers some answers but raises new questions; 50 Cent reaches a deal to end his lawsuit over alleged insinuations that he had penis surgery; Donald Glover defeats a copyright lawsuit over the Childish Gambino hit “This Is America”; Ohio cops sue Afroman for using their images after they raided his home with guns drawn; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Who Gets R. Kelly’s Record Royalties?
Twice convicted on allegations of sexual abuse and facing decades in federal prison, R. Kelly owes a lot of money to a lot of people. Luckily, a pile of recording royalties are sitting in his account at Sony Music. But who gets first access to them?
In a ruling last week, the Illinois Supreme Court said first dibs belong to Heather Williams, an abuse victim who won a $4 million civil judgment against Kelly in 2020. For procedural reasons, the appeals court said Williams should take priority over Midwest Commercial Funding, a Chicago landlord that’s owed $3.5 million from Kelly over unpaid rent at a local studio space. The court upheld an earlier ruling that had ordered Sony to hand over “any funds currently in Kelly’s royalty account” to Williams, and keep giving her his incoming royalties until the judgment was paid off.
While state high court’s decision offered some important clarity – the Sony account had been frozen for years while the case played out across the appeals courts – it left plenty of big questions unanswered.
-According to the decision, Kelly’s account held $1.5 million in 2020 when Williams initially demanded that Sony hand it over. But how much more money has been accrued since then? And how much is coming in each year? Sony declined to comment on the situation when asked.
-What about Kelly’s criminal victims? Federal judges in New York and Illinois have ordered him to pay more than $500,000 in restitution and fines after he was convicted on sex trafficking, racketeering and child porn charges. Should those victims also get access to the record royalties? Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Chicago both declined to comment on the situation.
-Kelly’s lawyers are currently trying to overturn the underlying $4 million judgment for Williams, arguing it was handed down when the singer was stuck in prison and that he was not afforded a proper chance to fight back. Those efforts face an uphill climb, but at the very least could delay any final payments.
-Finally, it’s important to note that last week’s ruling was limited to his record royalties. The extent to which Kelly is still earning money from his compositional rights, and whether he would be able sell those rights for anything other than “fire sale” prices, is an even murkier situation.
For a deeper breakdown of the situation, including access to the Illinois Supreme Court’s entire written decision, go read our full story here.
Other top stories this week…
“ENTIRELY DIFFERENT” – A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Donald Glover of ripping off his chart-topping Childish Gambino hit “This Is America” from an earlier song by a rapper named Kidd Wes called “Made In America.” The judge said the lyrics were “entirely different” and that the accuser failed to satisfy even basic procedural requirements.
CASE CLOSED FOR 50 CENT – The rapper reached a settlement to end a lawsuit in which he accused a Miami medical spa of exploiting an innocent photo of him to imply that he was a client — and, more startlingly, to falsely suggest that 50 had received penile enhancement surgery as part of his work. No word on the terms of the agreement.
COPS SUE AFROMAN AFTER RAID – The rapper Afroman was hit with a bizarre civil lawsuit from several Ohio police officers, who claim he’s caused them “emotional distress” by using their images after they staged a guns-drawn raid on his home last year that resulted in no criminal charges. The rapper says the case is baseless and he’s planning to counter-sue over damage done to his home.
NFT SETTLEMENT FOR 3LAU – Citing an imminent settlement, a Manhattan federal judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming that the DJ and producer 3LAU refused to properly share the earnings from an $11.7 million NFT auction with a musical collaborator named Luna Aura.
SONY SUES TIKTOK CREATOR – Sony Music Entertainment relaunched a lawsuit against Trefuego (real name Dantreal Daevon Clark-Rainbolt), the creator of a popular TikTok song called “90mh,” over allegations that he prominently sampled a 1986 track by Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata without “paying a cent.”
NO CHARGES FOR NICK LACHEY – The 98 Degrees singer avoided criminal charges in Los Angeles in connection with a paparazzi run-in last March, in which he allegedly reached into a photog’s car and attempted to grab her phone. Under a deal with prosecutors, Lachey agreed to attend anger management classes and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
50 Cent has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit in which he accused a Miami medical spa of falsely suggesting that he’d had penis surgery, according to court documents filed Friday (March 24).
The rapper claims that Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa exploited an innocent photo he’d “graciously agreed” to take with her to imply that he was a client — and, more startlingly, that he had received penile enhancement surgery as part of his work.
But in a joint filing made Friday in Miami federal court, attorneys for both 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) and Kogan said they had “reached an agreement in principle to settle Mr. Jackson’s claims” and were “in the process of preparing an agreement to finalize and memorialize” the deal.
An attorney for 50 Cent did not immediately return a request for comment. A lawyer for Kogan declined to comment.
50 Cent sued Kogan in September, arguing that he took a photo with “someone he thought was a fan” and had “never consented” to the use of the image for commercial purposes in any form. He says Kogan not only posted the image to Instagram herself but also engineered an article on the website The Shade Room that used the post to make the “false insinuation” that she’d provided him with penile enhancement.
The article in question (“Penis Enhancements Are More Popular Than Ever & BBLs Are Dying Out: Cosmetic Surgery CEO Angela Kogan Speaks On It”) did not directly claim that Jackson had the surgery. But it allegedly said he was a “client” of the practice while repeatedly using the image of him with Kogan, leading Jackson’s lawyers to say the “implication was clear.”
“Defendants’ actions have exposed Jackson to ridicule, caused substantial damage to his professional and personal reputation, and violated his right to control his name and image,” the star’s lawyers wrote at the time. They included social media comments in which users mocked the rapper, including one that “crudely” said the rapper should be called “50 inch.”
Kogan strongly denied the allegations and immediately moved to dismiss the case, saying 50 Cent actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. She argued it was just an “innocuous” use of the photo, not a direct suggestion that he’d endorsed the office.
But in December, Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. denied Kogan’s request to toss out the case, saying that 50 Cent might eventually be able to prove his allegations at trial.
“As the proverbial saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words,” Scola wrote. “This one in particular depicts a worldwide celebrity next to Kogan with MedSpa’s name repeated all throughout the background. The promotional value is evident.”