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: Taylor Swift ends a long-running copyright case over the lyrics to “Shake It Off,” Tory Lanez heads to trial over accusations that he shot Megan Thee Stallion, Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter is accused of sexually assault, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift’s Accusers Drop “Shake It Off” Case
It was the next big music copyright case – until it wasn’t.After five long years of litigation, and with just a month to go until a scheduled trial, attorneys for Taylor Swift reached an agreement Monday with songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler to end their copyright infringement lawsuit claiming the superstar stole some of the core lyrics to “Shake It Off” from an earlier song.The terms of the agreement were not publicly released. Billboard was first to report the settlement.Hall and Butler sued Swift way back in 2017, claiming she’d lifted the lyrics from “Playas Gon’ Play,” a 2001 song they wrote for the R&B group 3LW. In that song, the line was “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”; in Swift’s track, she sings, “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” (The music itself was not in play.)The case was a big deal, if for no other reason than that “Shake It Off” was a big deal. Released in September 2014 off of Swift’s 1989, the song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, making it a uniquely major hit even for one of music’s top stars.But it was also a big deal because of the legal issues at play. Like the earlier battles over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse,” the case posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright law — about where protection ends and the public domain begins. That question was explored in regard to various musical elements in those earlier cases; the “Shake It Off” case might have offered answers in relation to lyrics.Put simply: The words in both songs were clearly similar — everyone can see that. But were they creative or unique enough in the first place to merit giving particular songwriters a decades-long legal monopoly over them? Experts who chatted with Billboard thought the answer was no.But we’ll never know for sure. Swift’s lawyers spent years trying to make that case, arguing that many earlier songs (1997’s “Playa Hater” by Notorious B.I.G. and 1999’s “Don’t Hate the Player” by Ice-T, among others) had used the same words. A judge initially agreed, ruling that the lyrics were not novel enough for copyright protection. But a federal appeals court later overturned that ruling, and the last substantive decision in the case was a ruling last year that the question was simply too close to call and would need to be decided by a jury.With the “Shake It Off” case now officially in the rearview, what’s the next big music copyright case? Maybe it’s the lawsuits against Ed Sheeran over allegations that his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Or the dueling cases against Dua Lipa over her own mega-smash “Levitating.” Or maybe it’s something that hasn’t even been filed yet…
THE OTHER BIG STORY: Megan Thee Stallion Shooting Trial Begins
Tory Lanez and Los Angeles prosecutors headed to court this week to kick off a closely-watched jury trial over whether he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, with a potential 22-year prison sentence looming for Lanez if convicted.The trial, set to last for at least a week, will center on the early morning of July 12, 2020, when Stallion, Lanez and Stallion’s friend Kelsey Harris were driving in an SUV following a party at Kylie Jenner’s house. According to prosecutors, after an argument broke out, Megan got out of the vehicle and began walking away, when Lanez shouted, “Dance, bitch!” and began shooting at her feet.Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) has pleaded not guilty to all three charges (assault with a firearm, gun possession and discharging a firearm with gross negligence) and has steadfastly maintained his innocence.The upcoming trial will feature testimony from a number of high-profile witnesses, including Stallion herself and Harris. Also potentially taking the stand are Jenner and Corey Gamble, Kris Jenner’s boyfriend who was allegedly at the party. Lanez might also testify, but putting a defendant on the stand is always a gamble for defense attorneys.Billboard’s Heran Mamo will be in the building covering the trial all week, and she was there Monday (Dec. 13) when the case kicked off with opening statements. Some highlights from Day One:-Prosecutors have assembled a formidable case. They told jurors that Harris plans to testify that “her close friend was shot by the defendant,” and that they have texts from Harris just minutes after the shooting: “Help. Tory shot meg. 911.”-Lanez’s attorneys will present the theory that Harris may have actually been the one who discharged the gun. Lead attorney George Mgdesyan told jurors that “this case is about jealousy,” involving a love triangle between the three celebrities, and that there would be witness testimony about “a fist fight between the girls” leading up to the shooting.Stallion herself is set to testify on Tuesday, so check back in with Billboard for Heran’s dispatch…
Other top stories this week…
NICK CARTER SUED FOR RAPE – Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was hit with a lawsuit alleging that he raped a 17-year-old fan on his tour bus following a 2001 concert in Washington. Shannon “Shay” Ruth claims that Carter invited her onboard as she sought an autograph, gave her alcohol, and then repeatedly assaulted her — but that she didn’t report it because he told her she would “go to jail if she told anyone what happened between them.” In response to the lawsuit, Carter’s attorney called the allegations “legally meritless” and “entirely untrue,” filed by someone “manipulated into making false allegations about Nick.”50 CENT ‘INSINUATION’ SUIT MOVES AHEAD – A federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 50 Cent that accuses a Miami medical spa of using an innocent photo he snapped to falsely suggest that he’d had penis enhancement surgery. In seeking to boot the case, Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa argued that 50 actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. But the judge said such arguments were premature — and that some of the company’s other defenses were “simply wrong.”OFT-SAMPLED, NOW INFRINGED? Roddy Ricch was sued for copyright infringement by songwriter Greg Perry, who says elements of Ricch’s chart-topping 2019 song “The Box” were lifted from a 1975 soul song called “Come On Down.” Perry says his track has become something of a mainstay sample in the world of hip-hop, featured in both Young Jeezy’s 2008 song “Wordplay” and in Yo Gotti’s 2016 song “I Remember.” But he says those earlier songs were fully licensed, unlike Ricch’s: “Other [artists] in the rap world that have chosen to copy elements of ‘Come On Down’ have done so legally and correctly,” Perry’s lawyers wrote. “Defendants chose not to.”BORED APE LAWSUIT CLUB – Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd and dozens of other celebrities were hit with a class action alleging they were secretly paid to “misleadingly” promote NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, leaving investors with “staggering losses.” The case claims that Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs Inc. perpetrated a “vast scheme” in which they “discreetly” paid “highly influential celebrities” to pump up the value of the NFTs (non-fungible tokens). In response to the lawsuit, Yuga called the allegations “opportunistic and parasitic” and “without merit.”GENIUS V. GOOGLE AT SCOTUS – The Supreme Court suggested this week that it might be interested in tackling a lawsuit filed by the music database Genius against Google. The case, which claims Google illegally copied the site’s lyrics and posted them in search results, was dismissed in March. But with Genius currently asking the high court to hear the case, the justices asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file briefs “expressing the views of the United States” on whether it should do so. Genius has warned that the ruling in favor of Google threatens “a vast swath of internet businesses”; Google says that’s just “alarmist hyperbole” and the case does not deserve the high court’s time.
The U.S. Supreme Court looks like it might be about to jump into a lawsuit filed by the music database Genius that accuses Google of illegally copying the site’s lyrics and posting them in search results.
After a lower court dismissed the case in March, Genius – a platform that lets users add and annotate lyrics – asked the high court to hear the case and overturn the ruling. Though it called the ruling “unjust” and “absurd,” such petitions are always a long shot; the Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the 7000 cases it receives each year.
But the odds for Genius just got better. In an order Monday, the justices asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file briefs in the case “expressing the views of the United States” on whether or not the court should hear the case against Google.
That kind of request (a “call for the view of the Solicitor General,” or CVSG, in SCOTUS parlance) indicates that the justices think the issues in the case might be significant enough for the court to tackle. Genius has warned that the ruling for Google threatens “a vast swath of internet businesses”; Google says that’s “alarmist hyperbole” and the case does not deserve the high court’s time.
Neither Genius nor Google immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Genius sued the tech giant in 2019, claiming Google had stolen the site’s carefully-transcribed content for its own “information boxes” in search results, essentially free-riding on the “time, labor, systems and resources” that goes into creating such a service. In a splashy twist, Genius said it had used a secret code buried within lyrics that spelled out REDHANDED to prove Google’s wrongdoing.
Though it sounds like a copyright case, Genius didn’t actually accuse Google of stealing any intellectual property. That’s because it doesn’t own any; songwriters and publishers own the rights to lyrics, and both Google and Genius pay for the same licenses to display them. Instead, Genius argued it had spent time and money transcribing and compiling “authoritative” versions of lyrics, and that Google had breached the site’s terms of service by “exploiting” them without permission.
But in March, that distinction proved fatal for Genius. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the case, ruling that only the actual copyright owners – songwriters or publishers – could have filed such a case, not a site that merely transcribed the lyrics. In technical terms, the court said the case was “preempted” by federal copyright law, meaning that the accusations from Genius were so similar to a copyright claim that they could only have been filed that way.
In taking the case to the Supreme Court in August, Genius argued the ruling would be a disaster for websites that spend time and money to aggregate user-generated content online. Such companies should be allowed to protect that effort against clear copycats, the company said, even if they don’t hold copyrights.
“It serves no public purpose … to bar these companies from enforcing their contracts so that behemoths like Google can vacuum up content and increase their internet dominance,” Genius wrote. “Big-tech companies like Google don’t need any assists from an overly broad view of copyright preemption; they already control vast swaths of the internet, to the public’s detriment.”
Google obviously disagrees. In a response to the Supreme Court, the company urged the justices to avoid the case and reject Genius’s “alarmist hyperbole,” arguing that the lower ruling was “plainly correct.” Google said Genius was trying to use an agreement “inconspicuously tucked behind a tiny link” to create “pseudo-copyright” control over songs written by other people.
“Genius does not own the copyrights to any of the lyrics. Genius nevertheless wants to prevent any website visitor from reproducing or publicly displaying the lyrics,” Google’s lawyers wrote. “Its solution? Ignore the true copyright owners and invent new rights through a purported contract.”
Opening statements kicked off the highly anticipated trial over whether Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot two years ago.
Los Angeles prosecutors hope to convict Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) of three felony charges over the July 12, 2020 incident, in which he allegedly shot Stallion in the foot during an argument after a pool party in the Hollywood Hills.
In October 2020, he was charged with one count of assault with a firearm and another gun possession charge. On Dec. 6, 2022, just one week before the trial began, the L.A. district attorney’s office added a new, third count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence. If convicted on all three charges, Lanez faces 22 years in prison. Yet Lanez, 30, has maintained his innocence and looked poised to fight for it while arriving at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center Monday morning (Dec. 12) in a cool mint suit and white turtleneck while holding his son’s hand as he entered the packed courtroom with the rest of his entourage.
Prosecutors argued that the shooting took place shortly after Stallion, Lanez and her former friend Kelsey Harris all attended a pool party at Kylie Jenner‘s house on the night of July 11, 2020. As they left in a black Cadillac Escalade driven by Lanez’s security guard Jauquan Smith, L.A. County District Defense Attorney Alexander Bott said an argument between Stallion and Lanez, whom he claimed had “been intimate” with one another, erupted after “Meg had insulted his skills as a musical artist.” She then exited the vehicle before Lanez allegedly grabbed and pointed a gun, yelled “Dance, bi—!” and fired five rounds, which Bott played the audio of twice during his statement. Prosecutors claim that “she was bleeding, she was injured” after Lanez struck both of Stallion’s feet.
And while arguing that Harris, who is expected to testify during the trial, “will tell you her close friend was shot by the defendant,” Bott also claimed the defendant “pulled her by the hair and “either punched her or slapped her.” He showed a screenshot of three consecutive text messages Harris sent to Stallion’s bodyguard, Justin Edison, at 4:27 a.m., just minutes after the shooting: “Help. Tory shot meg. 911.” After responding to 911 calls from neighbors, police officers — some of whom were called by prosecutors to take the stand today as witnesses — conducted a high-risk traffic stop on Hollywood Blvd., where they found a gun on the floorboard of the front passenger seat, where Lanez had been sitting.
Bott says while Stallion was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where a doctor extracted three major bullet fragments from her foot while performing surgery, Harris, Lanez and Smith went to the Hollywood police station and underwent testing for gunshot residue, which Lanez, Harris and two other people at the scene tested positive for. Other evidence the prosecutors brought in included a recording of a phone call Lanez made from jail to Harris at 9:05 a.m., approximately five hours after the shooting, where he profusely apologized and admitted he was “so drunk,” and a screenshot of his text to Stallion at 8:59 p.m., when he wrote, “Meg. I know you prolly never gone to talk to me again. But I genuinely want u to know I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. And I was just too drunk .”
Bott ultimately argued that Harris’ texts to Edison claiming the defendant shot Stallion, the gun being “warm to the touch” (meaning it was consistent with a recent firing, Officer Sandra Cabral claimed in her testimony later on), the doctor who performed surgery on Stallion’s foot and found bullet fragments, the call Lanez made to Harris in jail hours after the shooting, and his apology text to Stallion should all point to the defendant being guilty.
But Lanez’s lead attorney George Mgdesyan argued, “This case is about jealousy” before painting a different scene at Jenner’s pool party and diving into Lanez, Stallion and Harris’ tumultuous relationship. He suggested Stallion was triggered by seeing Lanez and Jenner hanging in the pool together, causing her to want to leave the party with Lanez. They eventually left with Harris and Smith, the latter of whom drove them in the black SUV, but Mgdesyan stated Stallion had left some of her belongings at Jenner’s house and made the foursome return. “She was so drunk, she was so jealous,” he claimed, that the billionaire makeup mogul told the “Savage” rapper to leave the party because she was causing a scene.
The defense claimed that Stallion then started an argument with Lanez during their car ride back for initially not wanting to leave with her and instead wanting to stay with Jenner. When Harris sided with her, the Alone at Prom singer questioned her allegiance and exposed that Stallion had a sexual relationship with him behind Harris’ back, since Harris and Lanez had been linked together first. Lanez seems to have corroborated his claim in a tweet from February 2022 when he wrote that the apology text he had sent Stallion mere hours after the shooting was due to “good d*ick had me f—ing 2 best friends …. and I got caught.”
According to the defense, Stallion had also been romantically involved with fellow rapper DaBaby and NBA player Ben Simmons right after Harris had dated both men. Mgdesyan zeroed in on the physical altercation that allegedly ensued between Harris and Stallion in the car and mentioned that a witness named Sean Kelly, whom he said police interviewed minutes after the shooting because their SUV was parked by his house, saw Harris get out from the back seat of the car, open Stallion’s front passenger door and “saw a fist fight between the girls” before one of them held a gun. The defense ultimately posed the theory that Harris may have been the one who discharged the gun and shot Stallion.
Mgdesyan also argued “[Stallion’s] lying about her story,” pointing to the numerous interviews she’s given with news outlets and police as well as Instagram Lives she’s held in the last two years. He questioned why the rapper initially told police officers she cut her foot stepping on broken glass before claiming she had suffered a gunshot wound days later. After media outlets reported that Lanez had fired the gun, Stallion directly accused him in an August 2020 Instagram video. The defense also suggested Stallion was not completely truthful during her CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King from April 2022, when she denied having an intimate relationship with his client. Mgdesyan also acknowledged the apology messages Lanez sent to both women, which prosecutors showed earlier, and argued that his client never mentioned a gun or shooting in his call to Harris or text to Stallion but apologized for “cheating on them, having a sexual relationship with both of them” and not disclosing that either of them.
Stallion, 27, is expected to testify in court Tuesday (Dec. 13). It still remains unclear if Lanez will testify. The Gathering for Justice, a non-profit founded in 2005 by Harry Belafonte, has partnered with multiple women’s and violence prevention organizations to organize a rally outside of the county criminal courthouse in support of the three-time Grammy-winning rapper before she takes the stand on Tuesday. “We are committed to spreading the message that violence is not the answer. We know the time is now to advocate for victims of violence, particularly violence against Black women,” said president/CEO Carmen Perez-Jordan in a press statement. Her sentiments align with Stallion’s “protect Black women” message that she’s been spreading in countless interviews and performances, including her October 2020 Saturday Night Live performance and New York Times op-ed, in which she she wrote “There’s not much room for passionate advocacy if you are a Black woman.”
A federal judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 50 Cent that accused a Miami medical spa of falsely suggesting that he’d had penis surgery, ruling the rapper might have a valid case.
The rapper’s lawsuit 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.
Kogan strongly denies the allegations and immediately moved to dismiss the case, saying 50 actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. But in a decision Monday, Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. denied that motion, saying the lawsuit’s allegations were strong enough to survive the earliest stages of the case.
Among other things, Kogan defended herself by arguing that her Instagram post featuring the image merely thanked 50 for visiting her medical office and didn’t directly suggest that he’d endorsed the practice. But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Scola said that argument was “simply wrong.”
“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.”
Based on the claims in the lawsuit, the judge said the photo did more than just “thank” the rapper, whose birth name is Curtis James Jackson III: “Read in the light most favorable to Jackson, the defendants’ ‘thanks’ serves as a humblebrag. It is self-promotion.” The judge then offered up the dictionary definition of a “humblebrag” in a footnote.
Such a ruling does not mean 50 Cent has won the lawsuit. It merely means the case will head into discovery — the process during which both sides exchange key evidence — and toward an eventual trial where 50 will try to prove such allegations. But it bodes well for any litigant for a judge to rule that, if proven true, your allegations are valid.
An attorney for Kogan declined to comment on the decision.
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 — and Jackson’s lawyers 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.”
Firing back with her motion to dismiss the case in October, Kogan’s attorneys argued the image was “an innocuous capture of plaintiff and defendant in defendants’ office,” not the kind of direct endorsement that would give rise to a lawsuit. And her lawyers argued that she had no direct role in the Shade Room using the Instagram post alongside the article about penile enhancements.
But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Scola said Kogan’s lawyers had glossed over the fact that she had not merely posted the image to Instagram, but also posted a screen-captured video of her scrolling through the Shade Room’s article.
“They weakly argue that Jackson consented to the photo’s being uploaded on to Instagram while making no mention of Jackson’s consent/non-consent as to the screen capture video and the promotional value it doubtlessly served,” the judge wrote.
“That omission is fatal,” Scola continued. “Because the defendants took it upon themselves to post the video onto their Instagram accounts, Jackson can plausibly argue that the defendants unauthorizedly used his likeness to promote their business regardless of whether the defendants had any role in TSR’s publication of either the Tweet or the article.”
Even if 50 Cent had traded his photo consent for free medical care, the judge also questioned whether such treatment could possibly be fair payment for the commercial scale at which Kogan allegedly used the image.
“The promotional value that the defendants have received from repeatedly sharing Kogan’s photo with Jackson is surely great,” Scola wrote. “Although the court has no reason to doubt the quality of the ‘free medspa services’ that the defendants provided Jackson, the record is not sufficiently established to substantiate the defendants’ suggestion that their services equitably compensated Jackson.”
Taylor Swift has reached an agreement with two songwriters to end a five-year long copyright lawsuit claiming she stole the lyrics to “Shake It Off” from an earlier song about “playas” and “haters,” resolving one of the music industry’s biggest legal battles without a climactic trial or ruling.
In a joint filing made on Monday in California federal court, attorneys for both Swift and her accusers – songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler – asked a judge for an order “dismissing this action in its entirety.” Before the deal, a trial had been scheduled to kick off in January.
The public filings did not include any specific terms of the apparent settlement, like whether any money exchanged or songwriting credits would be changed. Attorneys for both sides and a rep for Swift did not immediately return requests for comment.
The agreement means a sudden end for a blockbuster case that seemed headed toward the next landmark ruling on music copyrights. Following legal battles over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the case against Swift posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright protection, with her lawyers arguing that the accusers were trying to “cheat the public domain” by monopolizing basic lyrical phrases.
Hall and Butler first sued way back in 2017, claiming Swift stole her lyrics to “Shake It Off” from their “Playas Gon’ Play,” a song released by R&B group 3LW in 2001. That was no small accusation, given the song in question: “Shake It Off” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2014 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, a mega-hit even for one of music’s biggest stars.
In Hall and Butler’s song, the line was “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”; in Swift’s track, she sings, “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” In their complaint, the duo said Swift’s lyric was clearly copied from their song.
In the years since, Swift’s attorneys repeatedly pushed to dismiss the case, arguing that a short snippet of lyrics about “players” and “haters” was not creative or unique enough to be covered by copyrights. They cited more than a dozen earlier songs that had used similar phrases, including 1997’s “Playa Hater” by Notorious B.I.G and 1999’s “Don’t Hate the Player” by Ice-T.
Swift initially won a decision in 2018 dismissing the case on those grounds, with a federal judge ruling that Hall and Butler’s lyrics were not protected because popular culture in 2001 had had been “heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters.” But an appeals court later overruled that decision, and a judge ruled last year that the case would need to be decided by a jury trial.
“Even though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence/structure,” the judge wrote at the time.
More recently, Swift’s team again asked the judge to dismiss the case, this time making a new argument: That documents turned over during the case had revealed that Hall and Butler voluntarily signed away their right to file the lawsuit in the first place.
In an August filing, Swift’s lawyers said the documents proved that Hall and Butler had granted their music publishers the exclusive rights to bring an infringement lawsuit over the song, meaning they lacked the legal standing to do so. Her lawyers said the pair had even emailed their publishers – Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group, respectively – asking for permission to sue, but that both companies had refused the request.
“After their music publishers refused to assign to plaintiffs the claim they assert in this action, their manager unsuccessfully lobbied a United States Congressman to get a House sub-committee to intervene,” Swift’s lawyers alleged in the filing.
That motion was still pending when Monday’s settlement was filed.
Tory Lanez and Los Angeles prosecutors on Monday will finally kick off a closely-watched jury trial over whether he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, with a potential 22-year prison sentence looming for Lanez if convicted.
After a week of jury selection, prosecutors will make opening statements in their effort to convict Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) of three felony charges over the July 2020 incident, in which the rapper allegedly shot Stallion in the foot during an argument after a pool party in the Hollywood Hills.
Lanez has maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to all three charges – and publicly implying that Stallion is lying about the shooting. Stallion (born Megan Pete) has been steadfast against such pushback, writing in a New York Times op-ed that “even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment.”
The trial will center on the early morning of July 12, 2020, when Stallion, Lanez and Stallion’s friend Kelsey Harris were driving in an SUV following a party at Kylie Jenner’s house. According to prosecutors, after an argument broke out, Megan got out of the vehicle and began walking away, then Lanez shouted, “Dance, bitch!” and began shooting at her feet.
Lanez has suggested on social media that he was romantically involved with both women, which led to the altercation. Stallion has strongly denied this.
Immediately after the incident, Stallion initially told police officers that she cut her foot stepping on broken glass, but days later alleged that she had suffered a gunshot wound. After media outlets reported that Lanez had fired the gun, Stallion directly accused him in an August 2020 Instagram video.
In October 2020, Lanez was charged with one count of assault with a firearm and another gun possession charge. At a December 2021 hearing, a Los Angeles judge allowed the case to move forward to a trial. A new charge, discharging a firearm with gross negligence, was added last week. Lanez has pleaded not guilty to all three counts.
The upcoming trial will feature testimony from a number of high-profile witnesses, including from Stallion herself and Kelsey Harris. Also taking the stand could be Jenner and Corey Gamble, Kris Jenner’s boyfriend who was also allegedly at the party. Peterson might take the stand himself, but putting a defendant on the stand is always a gamble for defense attorneys.
The government is expected to wrap up its case by Friday and turn over the proceedings to Lanez’s attorneys. The trial is expected to run into next week.
For the government, prosecutors Kathy Ta and Alexander Bott will handle the case. Though Lanez has been represented by celebrity attorney Shawn Holley throughout the case, attorney George Mgdesyan handled last week’s proceedings and appears to be set to take lead at the trial.
Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd and dozens of other celebrities are facing a new class action alleging they were secretly paid to “misleadingly” promote NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, leaving investors with “staggering losses.”
In a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for a pair of consumers claimed that Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs Inc. perpetrated a “vast scheme” in which they “discreetly” paid “highly influential celebrities” to pump up the value of the NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
“Defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales,” the lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. “The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions … were able to artificially increase the interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs…, causing investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”
Though this “conspiracy” eventually “raked in millions” for the various defendants, the lawsuit said investors in Bored Ape and other NFTs “were left with staggering losses.”
Yuga Labs and reps for Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd also did not return requests for comment.
The case is the latest over celebrity endorsements for cryptocurrencies and NFTs, which soared in value during 2020 and 2021 but have taken a bruising as the economy has slowed in 2022.
In January, investors sued Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and others earlier this year for promoting the cryptocurrency EthereumMax. And last month, after the spectuacular collapse of crypto company FTX, investors filed a similar suit against Larry David, Tom Brady, Giselle Bündchen, Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry.
But such cases could be facing legal headwinds. The lawsuit against Kardashian and others over EthereumMax was dismissed by a federal judge on Wednesday, who said the conduct raises “legitimate concerns” about online “snake oil,” but that investors must still be expected to “act reasonably before basing their bets on the zeitgeist of the moment.”
Notably, that case was filed by the same lawyer, John T. Jasnoch of Scott + Scott, who filed the new case on Thursday against Yuga Labs. The new case was brought by Adonis Real and Adam Titcher, two consumers who say they bought NFTs, on behalf of potentially thousands of other buyers.
The new lawsuit centers on an alleged partnership between Yuga and music industry bigwig Guy Oseary – longtime manager to Madonna, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers and others – in which they aimed to “leverage their vast network of A-list musicians, athletes, and celebrity client” to promote Bored Ape and other offerings.
The plaintiffs claim that this was achieved via MoonPay, a crypto platform in which Oseary’s venture capital firm had allegedly invested. Since the celebrity defendants were also allegedly investors in MoonPay, the lawsuit claims Yuga and Oseary used it “as a covert way to compensate the Promoter Defendants for their promotions of the BAYC NFTs without disclosing it to unsuspecting investors.”
Oseary did not immediately return requests for comment on the allegations.
Read the entire complaint here:
Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was hit with a lawsuit Thursday (Dec. 8) alleging that he raped a 17-year-old fan on his tour bus following a 2001 concert in Washington.
In a civil lawsuit filed in Nevada court, Shannon “Shay” Ruth says Carter picked her from a group of women seeking autographs after a concert in Tacoma. She says he then brought her aboard the bus, gave her an alcoholic beverage called “VIP juice” and repeatedly assaulted her.
The woman, now 39, says 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 in the complaint, obtained by Billboard. “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.”
The attack allegedly left Ruth infected with the sexually-transmitted infection human papillomavirus, or HPV, according to the lawsuit.
In addition to Ruth, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of three other unnamed “Jane Doe” accusers who allegedly experienced similar attacks by Carter from 2003 to 2006. According to the complaint, all three of those women were also given alcohol before being forced to have sex with him; one was allegedly similarly underage.
A rep for Carter did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard. An unnamed source close to the singer reportedly told TMZ that the accusations were “categorically false.”
The allegations are not the first against Carter. Back in 2017, Melissa Schuman, a former member of teen-pop group Dream, publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2003 when she was 18 years old. Carter denied the allegations at the time, saying Schuman had “never expressed” to him that “anything we did was not consensual.”
After an investigation into Schuman’s accusations, prosecutors in Los Angeles declined to bring criminal charges against Carter on the grounds that the 10-year statute of limitations had expired.
The new lawsuit against Carter contains explicit and disturbing details of the alleged sexual assault.
Once she had finished her “VIP drink,” Ruth says Carter took her to a bathroom and demanded that she perform oral sex on him: “Alone and under duress, Plaintiff reluctantly complied with his demand. Plaintiff cried during the ordeal.”
Following that incident, Ruth says Carter took her to another room on the bus where he “pushed plaintiff down onto the bed and proceeded to mount her.” She says she “begged him to stop” and tried to get away, but that “every time she said ‘No’ and tried to get up, Carter got angry and pushed her down harder.”
After the attack, Ruth says Carter grabbed her, called her a “retarded little bitch” and said that nobody would believe her story. Ruth has autism and cerebral palsy, according to the complaint.
Read the entire complaint here:
A new copyright lawsuit claims that Roddy Ricch stole elements of his chart-topping 2019 song “The Box” from a 1975 soul song that’s been repeatedly sampled – legally – by other rappers.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court filed against Ricch (real name Roderick Wayne Moore Jr.) and Atlantic Records, songwriter Greg Perry says the smash hit (which spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100) clearly borrowed from his decades-old song “Come On Down.”
Perry’s lawyers say that an average music fan would be able to hear the “strikingly similar” tempo and melody of the two tracks simply by listening to it, but that more thorough investigation by music experts has more conclusively proven the theft.
“Comparative analysis of the beat, lyrics, hook, rhythmic structure, metrical placement, and narrative context by a musicology expert demonstrates clearly and convincingly that ‘The Box’ is an unauthorized duplication and infringement of certain elements of ‘Come On Down’.”
In specific terms, Perry claims that Ricch infringed the “ascending minor scale played by violin” that plays at the beginning of “Come On Down” and repeats six throughout the song. He says a very similar musical segment is featured in “The Box” and “permeates” the Ricch’s song, repeating 24 times.
According to Perry, “Come On Down” is a popular sample in hip hop – featured in both Yung Jeezy’s 2008 “Wordplay” and in Yo Gotti’s 2016 “I Remember.” But he says that both of those songs were fully cleared and licensed by giving him a songwriting credit and an ownership stake.
“Other [artists] in the rap world that have chosen to copy elements of ‘Come On Down’ have done so legally and correctly,” Perry’s lawyers wrote. “Defendants chose not to license the musical composition from plaintiffs and instead chose to intentionally infringe upon the copyright.”
Typically, a copyright accuser like Perry needs to show that Ricch and the other “Box” songwriters had so-called access to “Come On Down,” meaning they had a chance to copy the song in the first place. But Perry’s lawyers say his was “so popular in both the R&B and Rap Community” as a sample that such access is already “firmly established” at the outset of the case.
The lawsuit does not specify how much Perry is seeking in damages, but his lawyers claim he was given a 50% cut or greater on each of the earlier songs that sampled from “Come On Down,” which could potentially mean millions of dollars in royalties for a chart-topping song like “The Box.”
A rep for Ricch at Atlantic Records did not immediately return a request for comment.
Read the 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: Atlantic Records faces decades-old sexual assault allegations under a new statute in New York allowing long-delayed abuse cases, Taylor Swift fans sue Live Nation over last month’s Ticketmaster debacle, Guns N’ Roses files a trademark infringement case against a site that sells literal guns and roses, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Atlantic Hit With Abuse Cases Over Founder
Atlantic Records is facing a pair of new lawsuits from women who say they were sexually assaulted by label co-founder Ahmet Ertegun in the 1980s and 1990s. And thanks to a newly-enacted statute in New York state, more such cases in the music industry could soon be on the way.Last week, former Atlantic talent scout Jan Roeg filed a case that claimed Ertegun (who died in 2006) assaulted her on their first meeting in 1983 and that his abuse then continued for “decades” after that. Naming both his estate and Atlantic itself (a unit of Warner Music Group), Roeg’s lawyers said company leadership knew about the problem but failed to take action to rein Ertegun in, thanks to a “boys will be boys” culture at the company at the time.Then on Sunday, former Atlantic A&R executive Dorothy Carvello filed a similar suit of her own, saying she had been “horrifically sexually assaulted” by Ertegun during her Atlantic tenure in the late 1980s. Carvello’s case cast a wider net, also claiming that former Atlantic co-CEO & co-chairman Doug Morris had assaulted her, and that former chairman and CEO Jason Flom had enabled the misconduct.“Executives at Atlantic Records … treated the company, its corporate headquarters, recording studios, and — even its corporate helicopter — as places to indulge their sexual desires,” Carvello’s lawyers wrote. “Employees like Ms. Carvello were the collateral damage of this toxic workplace culture.”Though the lawsuits are new, the allegations are not. In her memoir Anything for a Hit, Carvello made similar accusations against Ertegun and has since become a relentless voice calling for accountability in the music industry over what she alleges are longstanding patterns of abuse and attempts to silence victims. She’s even purchased stock in all three major record companies, aiming to use shareholder status “to bring more transparency to the music industry,” she told Billboard at the time.Both of the cases against Atlantic were filed under the New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a new statute enacted in May that created a one-year window for alleged abuse victims to file long-delayed lawsuits that would normally be barred by the statute of limitations. Advocates said the law was needed because the trauma of sexual assault and fear of retaliation often prevent abuse victims from seeking justice within traditional time limits.The ASA’s one-year window only went into effect on Nov. 24, and there’s reason to believe that many more cases could be coming before the law expires in a year. When New York passed a similar law in 2019 covering victims of childhood sexual abuse, CNN reported that nearly 11,000 suits were eventually filed during a 2-year window. And it seems unlikely those cases won’t include other decades-old allegations against former executives in the music industry.“The ‘sex, drugs, and Rock n’ Roll’ culture in the music industry at companies like Atlantic Records was taken as license by powerful men like Ahmet Ertegun to engage in sexual assault and other abuse of women,” said Lawrence M. Pearson, Roeg’s lawyer at the firm Wigdor LLP, in a statement when that case was filed. “Now, Ms. Roeg and other survivors of sexual assault who in past years were forced into silence due to the threat of retaliation or loss of their careers can get justice under the Adult Survivors Act.”
Other top stories this week…
TAYLOR FANS v. TICKETMASTER – More than two dozen Taylor Swift fans filed a lawsuit against Live Nation over Ticketmaster’s botched sale of tickets to her Eras Tour last month, the first known case filed over the fiasco. Mostly repeating existing gripes about the concert giant’s “anticompetitive” control of the live music industry, the case also alleged a veritable kitchen sink of other wrongdoing, including intentionally misleading fans about the amount of tickets that would be available and failing to take action against bots.CLASH OVER COVID CASH – Can you sue somebody for copying your “novel idea” that artists might be eligible for federal COVID relief funds? We’re about to find out. In a new lawsuit, a longtime music agent named Laurence Leader accused talent manager Michael Oppenheim of stealing his idea to help musical artists tap into Shuttered Venue Operators Grants — a COVID-era federal program designed primarily to help venues, not musicians. Leader says that after he disclosed the concept to Oppenheim in strict confidence, the rival used the same scheme to secure more than $200 million in SVOG funds for Vampire Weekend, Marshmello, Common, Lil Wayne and many others — something the lawsuit deemed “despicable” and an “outright betrayal.”BILLION DOLLAR BOOZE BATTLE – Jay-Z’s nasty dispute with Bacardi over their D’Usse Cognac brand might be bigger than we thought. In sealed filings made public last week, the rapper’s lawyers disclosed that Jay-Z previously demanded that Bacardi pay him $2.5 billion for his half of the business; that the rapper had offered to pay $1.5 billion to instead buy out Bacardi’s half; and that disputed internal forecasts showed D’Usse selling 2 million cases of cognac and earning $142.8 million annually by 2026. But it might be a while before we get a final outcome: The sprawling case is currently mired in procedural bickering between the two sides, spread across four lawsuits in two different states as well as a private arbitration proceeding.LITERAL GUNS AND ROSES – Guns N’ Roses filed a lawsuit against a gun retailer that’s using the name “Texas Guns and Roses,” arguing that the name infringes the band’s trademark rights — and that the band members especially don’t want to be associated with firearms or “polarizing” political views. The band said the Houston-based company “espouses political views related to the regulation and control of firearms and weapons on the website that may be polarizing to many U.S. consumers.” The site claims to sell literal roses, but GNR’s lawsuit called that a “contrivance” to justify the name theft.MAN WHO SHOT GAGA’S DOG WALKER GETS 21 YEARS – James Howard Jackson, the man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole her French bulldogs last year, took a plea deal and was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder. Prosecutors said the connection to Gaga was entirely coincidental and that the perpetrators were simply seeking to steal valuable bulldogs, which can cost thousands of dollars.FREEPLAY SAYS MUSIC ISN’T, AH, FREE TO PLAY – Freeplay Music, a company that sells so-called production music for use with video content, filed a copyright lawsuit against CNN that claims the cable news giant used more than 100 different songs in international segments without paying for them. Calling it infringement on a “breathtaking scale,” the Freeplay demanded at least $17 million in damages – the maximum in so-called statutory damages for every song infringed. The case is one of dozens of infringement lawsuits Freeplay has filed over the years, drawing criticism that the company is more interested in “extracting settlements” than actually selling music.ASTROWORLD LITIGATION UPDATE – More than a year into litigation over the deadly Astroworld music festival, attorneys for the event’s organizers told the judge overseeing the case that nearly 1,000 fans who sued over their alleged injuries have ignored discovery deadlines and failed to hand over “critical evidence.” With roughly 2,500 alleged victims still in the case, attorneys for the defendants in the case — Live Nation, Travis Scott, Apple and many others involved in the festival – warned that 956 of them had “not provided any response whatsoever” to basic requests for information: “There is no excuse for the non-responsive plaintiffs’ complete disregard of their discovery obligations.”