State Champ Radio Legal News
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After successfully defeating a lawsuit that claimed they ripped off their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger” from an earlier song, Sam Smith and Normani are now demanding that their accuser reimburse their legal bills – a whopping total of $732,202.
In a ruling last month, a federal judge rejected allegations that Smith and Normani had copied a little-known 2015 song of the same name when they released “Dancing,” one of Smith’s top-charting hits that peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100 chart.
Now, Smith and Normani say they shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for a “frivolous and unreasonable” lawsuit.
“Defective copyright infringement claims, like Plaintiff’s claims here, burden the court, cause potentially damaging negative publicity for recording artists … and others, and force needless attorney’s fees on them,” wrote attorney Peter Anderson, who reps the two stars in a Sept 22 court filing. “Awarding attorney’s fees here will deter plaintiff and others from filing and blindly prosecuting such claims without anything close to the required factual and legal basis.”
The case against Smith and Normani was filed last year by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who claimed that “Dancing” was “strikingly similar” to their 2015 same-named track. In their complaint, they said it was “beyond any real doubt” that the song had been copied.
But last month, U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu said it was, in fact, very much in doubt. Granting Smith and Normani’s motion for an immediate ruling ending the lawsuit, the judge said the songs simply were not similar – and he criticized the plaintiffs for manipulating them to make them appear more alike.
“Permitting copyright plaintiffs to prevail … by rotating chords, recalibrating the tempo, and altering the pitch of a defendant’s song so that it sounds more similar to the plaintiffs’ would lead courts to deem substantially similar two vastly dissimilar musical compositions,” Judge Hsu wrote at the time.
Unlike most forms of litigation, winners in copyright lawsuits are often able to legally recover the money they spent on lawyers fighting the case. Judges grant such requests in cases where a lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed, and they can serve as a powerful deterrent against future questionable lawsuits.
In their filing asking Hsu to order Vincent, Miranda and Banlaoi to reimburse them, Smith and Normani said the songwriters’ case had been exactly the kind of pointless lawsuit that needs to be deterred.
“Plaintiff sought to monopolize unprotectable elements that are common property to all,” Anderson wrote. “Claims like Plaintiff’s here threaten to cheat the public domain and curtail the creation of new works.”
As for the total, the pair of stars said they had incurred a whopping $732,202 bill for the services of Anderson and other lawyers from the top firm Davis Wright Tremaine who defended them. That figure was “below the median hourly rates” of similar elite copyright lawyers, they said, and they were “perfectly justified” in racking up big bills on a case that was demanding all of the profits from a a multi-platinum hit song.
BMG has reached a settlement to end a copyright lawsuit against a toymaker that promoted a brand of “unicorn poop” with a song called “My Poops” – a scatological parody set to the tune of Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.”
In an order Tuesday, a federal judge said that BMG and toymaker MGA Entertainment had “reached a settlement in principle” to resolve the lawsuit, marking an abrupt end to what would have been a high-profile dispute over copyright’s fair use doctrine when it comes to parody songs.
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment or more information about the terms of the settlement, like whether any money was exchanged.
Released to promote MGA’s Poopsie Slime Surprise toys – unicorns that release sparkling “unicorn poop” slime – “My Poops” features similar musical elements to Black Eyed Peas’ 2005 hit, which reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 and spent 36 total weeks on the chart. But it replaces the words with joke lyrics like “Whatcha gonna do with all that poop, all that poop.”
In a January complaint, BMG said the song was very clearly an infringement of its copyrights. In addition to copying key musical elements, BMG said, MGA’s song features a lead vocalist who “sounds very similar” to Black Eyed Peas lead singer Fergie.
“Music, especially a hit song such as ‘My Humps,’ adds great value when incorporated into a product or used in a video advertisement, because it increases consumer recognizability, consumer engagement and attention to the product,” BMG wrote in its lawsuit. “The infringing work is so substantially similar to ‘My Humps’ that it is obvious that the infringing work was intentionally copied.”
Federal protections for fair use expressly empower people to parody existing copyrighted works, and one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most important copyright rulings held that 2 Live Crew was allowed to release a bawdy parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” without paying royalties. But the music industry’s premiere parodist, “Weird Al” Yankovic, voluntarily chooses to license all of the songs that he parodies. And the legal analysis is undoubtedly trickier when a parody song is used for outright commercial advertising, rather than merely as a new song.
Back in 2013, the Beastie Boys sued a toy company called GoldieBlox after it released a viral parody of the group’s 1987 song “Girls” to promote its engineering and construction toys for girls. After the band threatened copyright infringement, GoldieBlox argued fair use – saying it had aimed to criticize the “highly sexist” message of the original Beastie Boys track and “further the company’s goal to break down gender stereotypes.”
But six months later, GoldieBlox agreed to a settlement in which it apologized to the Beastie Boys and agreed to donate a portion of its revenues to charities of the band’s choosing.
A self-described gangster who police and prosecutors say masterminded the shooting death of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996 is due to make his first appearance Wednesday (Oct. 4) before a Nevada judge.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 60, was arrested Friday during an early-morning walk near his home in suburban Henderson. A few hours later a grand jury indictment was unsealed in Clark County District Court charging him with murder.
Grand jurors also voted to add sentencing enhancements for the use of a deadly weapon and alleged gang activity. If Davis is convicted, that could add decades to his sentence. Davis denied a request from The Associated Press for an interview from jail where he’s being held without bond. Court records don’t list an attorney who could comment on his behalf.
Davis had been a suspect in the case, and publicly admitted his role in the killing in interviews ahead of his 2019 tell-all memoir, Compton Street Legend. “There’s one thing that’s for sure when living that gangster lifestyle,” he wrote. “You already know that the stuff you put out is going to come back; you never know how or when, but there’s never a doubt that it’s coming.”
Davis’ own comments revived the police investigation that led to the indictment, police and prosecutors said. In mid-July, Las Vegas police raided Davis’ home, drawing renewed attention to one of hip-hop music’s most enduring mysteries.
Prosecutors allege Shakur’s killing stemmed from a rivalry and competition for dominance in a musical genre that, at the time, was dubbed “gangsta rap.” It pitted East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect associated with rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight against West Coast members of a Crips sect that Davis has said he led in Compton, California.
Tension escalated in Las Vegas the night of Sept. 7, 1996, when a brawl broke out between Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, at the MGM Grand hotel-casino following a heavyweight championship boxing match won by Mike Tyson.
Knight and Shakur went to the fight, as did members of the South Side Crips,” prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said last week in court. “And (Knight) brought his entourage, which involved Mob Piru gang members.”
After the casino brawl, Knight drove a BMW with Shakur in the front passenger seat. The car was stopped at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up on the passenger side and gunfire erupted. Shot multiple times, Shakur died a week later at age 25. Knight was grazed by a bullet fragment.
Davis has said he was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and handed a .40-caliber handgun to his nephew in the back seat, from which he said the shots were fired. In Nevada, a person can be convicted of murder for helping another person commit the crime.
Among the four people in the Cadillac that night, Davis is the only one still alive. Anderson died in a May 1998 shooting in Compton. Before his death, Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s death. The other backseat passenger, DeAndre “Big Dre” or “Freaky” Smith, died in 2004. The driver, Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown, died in a 2015 shooting in Compton.
Knight, now 58, is now serving a 28-year prison sentence for running over and killing a Compton businessman outside a burger stand in January 2015. Sheriff Kevin McMahill, who oversees the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, has acknowledged criticism that his agency was slow to investigate Shakur’s killing.
“That was simply not the case,” McMahill said. He called the investigation “important to this police department.”
Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, issued a statement describing the arrest as “a pivotal moment” but didn’t praise authorities who investigated the case. “The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community,” she said.
Back in 2018, when music producer Sherman Nealy filed a lawsuit against Warner Music Group, it was just a run-of-the-mill copyright case. Nealy claimed that Flo Rida’s 2008 tune “In the Ayer” featured an unlicensed sample of “Jam the Box,” a 1984 track released by Pretty Tony that he owns.
It’s the same kind of claim that’s made in federal courts every day.
But five years later, Nealy’s lawsuit is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will use it as a vehicle to answer big unresolved questions about how much money can be awarded in copyright cases. Are those damages limited to just the last three years before a case was filed? Or can they range back decades, adding potentially many more millions to the total?
The high court’s eventual ruling, which the justices will issue next spring, will apply to all forms of copyrighted works, but the music industry is paying particularly close attention. In a filing earlier this year, record labels and music publishers called the case “exceptionally important” to their business.
Pay After Delay?
The controversy at the center of the case against Warner dates back to 2014, when the Supreme Court ruled that the movie studio MGM could be sued for copyright infringement over Raging Bull, even though the case was filed decades after the Martin Scorsese-directed film had first been released in 1980. The studio argued that long delay was unfair, but the justices pointed out that the Copyright Act has a three-year statute of limitations that resets with every new infringement.
Under the court’s interpretation of the law, as long as copies of an allegedly infringing book, song or movie had been sold during the three years prior to the lawsuit, it was fair game for a copyright case. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that ruling led to a surge in long-delayed infringement cases, including a high-profile lawsuit against Led Zeppelin over the 1971 song “Stairway To Heaven.”
But like many Supreme Court decisions, the Raging Bull ruling ultimately raised as many questions as it answered. Chief among them: if you can sue many years later, how far back can you seek damages? If you successfully sue someone in 2023 over a song that came out in 1995, can you demand payment based on 27 years of illegal sales?
In the Raging Bull ruling, the Supreme Court seemed to say no. In her opinion, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was fairly clear: “A successful plaintiff can gain retrospective relief only three years back from the time of suit. No recovery may be had for infringement in earlier years. Profits made in those years remain the defendant’s to keep.”
In the years since, the New York-centric U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has taken that language literally, ruling a copyright accuser cannot win damages for any for any conduct older than three years – full stop. If you wait to sue over a hit song from the 1990s, you cannot tap into those huge profits when you win the lawsuit.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (covering California) disagrees. If you can prove that you only recently “discovered” the fact that your copyright was infringed, the Ninth Circuit says you can seek damages going back all the way to all the way back to the very first infringement – potentially decades worth of penalties.
That means the two courts that contain the vast majority of the country’s creative industries are directly divided over how copyright law works – a so-called “circuit split” that the Supreme Court is tasked with correcting.
Heading To Court
Nealy sued Atlantic Records, Warner Chappell and Artist Publishing Group in Florida federal court in 2018, arguing he had never actually granted them a valid license for his “Jam the Box” to be sampled in Flo Rida’s “In the Ayer,” which reached No. 9 on the Hot 100 after being released in July 2008.
In 2021, the judge overseeing the case cited Raging Bull and ruled that Nealy couldn’t win any money from earlier than 2015. Though Nealy said he had only learned of the illegal sample in 2016 and wanted damages going all the way back to 2008, the judge cited the Supreme Court’s “binding precedent” that had “explicitly delimited damages to the three years prior.”
But earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned that ruling. Siding with the Ninth Circuit’s approach, the appeals court ruled that Nealy’s late discovery of the infringement was a different situation than the one dealt with in Raging Bull – and that any similar “discovery rule” cases would be allowed to seek damages as far back as they went.
Warner quickly appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. Repped by elite SCOTUS attorney Kannon Shanmugam of the law firm Paul Weiss, the company argued in a May petition that the “discovery” approach would unfairly expand the “financial exposure” of a copyright defendant and potentially lead to frivolous lawsuits that aimed to “extract settlements.”
“Deprived of a predictable limitations period and faced with expensive, time-consuming, and difficult litigation in order to defend years-old uses of copyrighted works, defendants will often be left with no choice but to settle claims early even in the absence of wrongdoing—or potentially never enter valuable agreements in the first place,” Shanmugam wrote for his client.
“Vitally Important”
The phrases “retroactive relief” and “three-year lookback period” might make your eyes glaze over, but the Nealy v. Warner case has big implications for copyright-heavy industries like music.
After the Raging Bull ruling dropped in 2014, artists and labels saw a rash of long-delayed cases. The lawsuit against Led Zeppelin – which resulted in more than six years of costly litigation before the band was ultimately cleared of all wrongdoing – was the most prominent, but it was just one of many. Meatloaf was sued over his 1993 song “I’d Do Anything For Love”; U2 was accused of ripping off its 1991 hit “The Fly”; and another case claimed that Notorious B.I.G.’s 1993 hit “Party and Bullshit” featured an unlicensed sample.
If the Supreme Court eventually rules in favor of Nealy, it would almost certainly encourage more age-old cases, creating a far larger potential prize for a successful accuser. As Nealy’s attorneys argued at an earlier stage of his case, when it comes to years-old copyright claims, “the vast bulk of damages” will typically fall outside the three-year limit.
Labels and publishers are watching the case closely. In a June brief at the Supreme Court, the Recording Industry Association of America and National Music Publishers’ Association didn’t advocate for either camp, but simply urged the justices to take up a case that is “vitally important to the music industry.”
“Because copyrights are the music industry’s most consequential asset, music labels and music publishers regularly find themselves both enforcing and defending copy right lawsuits,” lawyers for RIAA and NMPA wrote. “Without a clear national rule setting the temporal limits of recoverable damages, amici and their members face serious uncertainty.”
A Los Angeles judge ruled again Monday that Lady Gaga was not obligated to pay a $500,000 reward for the return of her stolen French bulldogs to the same woman who was criminally charged over the incident.
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Doubling down on an earlier decision to toss the case, Judge Holly Fujie dismissed a breach of contract case filed by Jennifer McBride, who pleaded no contest in December to receiving stolen property in connection with the 2021 robbery, in which Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Fischer was shot and nearly killed.
After the judge had given McBride a chance to fix her case, her lawyer argued that she was “in no way involved” with the theft of the dog and only wanted to help the animals. But in Monday’s decision, Judge Fujie said she was unswayed.
“Although plaintiff alleges that her motivation was to protect the bulldogs (and also to collect $500,000.00), this alleged motivation does not negate her guilt of the charge because she has admitted receiving the bulldogs with knowledge that they were stolen property,” the judge wrote. “If anything, the [updated lawsuit] makes even clearer … that plaintiff has unclean hands that prevent her from profiting from her actions.”
McBride is one of five people charged over the Feb. 24, 2021, gunpoint dog-napping of Gaga’s bulldogs, Koji and Gustav. Prosecutors say the singer was not specifically targeted, and that the group was merely trying to steal French bulldogs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. James Howard Jackson, the man who shot Fischer during the robbery, took a plea deal in December and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Days after the attack, it was McBride who returned the dogs to police, claiming she’d found the animals tied to a pole and asking about the reward. While police initially told the media that McBride appeared to be “uninvolved and unassociated” with the crime, she was later connected to the robbery and charged with one count of receiving stolen property and one count of being an accessory after the fact. In December, she pleaded no contest to the property charge and was sentenced to two years of probation.
But just two months later, McBride was back in court again — filing a civil lawsuit claiming she deserves the credit for returning the superstar’s bulldogs. The case argued that Gaga’s promise of a reward, which the media characterized as “no questions asked,” was a binding “unilateral” offer to pay for the safe return of the dogs, and that McBride had taken her up on the proposal by flipping on the men who actually committed the robbery.
But Gaga’s lawyers quickly argued that a convicted criminal like McBride cannot “profit from her participation in a crime.” And in July, Judge Fujie agreed.
“The allegations in the complaint are directly related to wrongful conduct that plaintiff pleaded guilty to in the criminal proceeding,” the judge wrote at the time. “Under the circumstances, plaintiff’s successful pursuit of her current claims would allow her to benefit from her admitted wrongdoing.”
In attempting to re-file an updated version of her lawsuit, McBride’s lawyers argued that she had “had no involvement with nor knowledge of the taking of Defendant’s dogs.” But in Monday’s ruling dismissing the case again, Judge Fujie pointed out all the things that McBride’s lawyers didn’t say.
“While Plaintiff alleges that she was not involved in the prior planning or the commission of the theft of Moving Defendant’s bulldogs, she does not deny that at the time she claimed the reward she knew that they were stolen from Moving Defendant, nor does she deny that she received them with that knowledge,” the judge wrote.
Banned Books Week is here, and while book lovers everywhere rally against the censorship of our cherished stories, musicians like Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel and Yola have added their names to the chorus of celebrities and activists in an open letter condemning the ominous threat of book bans. This impassioned message — led by the iconic LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow fame and propelled by moveon.org — boldly declares about book bans that “It’s only a matter of time before they target other forms of art, expression, and entertainment.”
This point is exactly what I was afraid of as I began working on my latest album, FREADOM: Songs Inspired by Banned Picture Books, and the reason why I want to get more musicians on board to join the movement against book bans.
As a Manhattanite, I wear many hats: touring musician, recording artist, early childhood music educator and mom to an eight-year-old bookworm. Over the past year, I’ve taken a dive deep into the disheartening world of book bans, especially books removed from school and library shelves. My connection to this issue deepened when I discovered that some of my daughter’s beloved books, including Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o and Alma and How She Got her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal, had been taken away in my own home state of Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis and spearheaded by his supporters in the right-wing group Moms for Liberty.
In the 2021-22 school year, First Amendment advocates PEN America reported that a shocking 317 children’s picture books were banned. Most of these silenced stories belong to BIPOC authors, LGBTQIA+ individuals, books with Jewish themes or stories representing diverse cultural backgrounds. The fact that even our youngest readers aren’t spared is truly devastating. Picture books and children’s music go hand-in-hand for young kids to learn about the world around them and build empathy for others.
When I set out to create songs for FREADOM, I naively thought that only books were under threat from modern censorship, though I vaguely knew about the mid-20th century “banning of immoral music” as it pertained to censorship of jazz and rock & roll due to “provocative” dancing or promoting social change. Growing up in the 1980s, while devouring the shelves of CDs at my local Miami music store, I recall the infamous black and white Parental Advisory labels placed on the plastic because of explicit content. I honestly thought music censorship was a thing of the past and we were collectively cool when it came to free music (and I’m not talking about the Napster kind.)
When I recently visited the PEN America offices, I was shocked to learn about an elementary school in Waukesha, Wis., where they banned a performance of the song “Rainbowland” by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus for violating their “controversial content policy.” Over the summer, the school board controversially dismissed first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel for daring to speak out against the musical ban — exercising her First Amendment rights outside of school hours on social media. Teachers in that district are also barred from wearing rainbows, discussing gender pronouns or even mentioning the word “anti-racist.”
As a lyricist, educator, and mother, I can confidently say that there’s nothing controversial about “Rainbowland” and its removal may be seen as an actionable blueprint from the right and a glimpse of what’s coming our way in the land of the “free.”
Book bans are just one piece of a larger plan to dismantle our education system and undermine the core of our democracy one art form at a time, all under the guise of “protecting children.” By standing idle and failing to protect our First Amendment rights now, we are heading on a bleak path forward. It’s only a matter of time before they come after our music, just as they’ve come after our bodily autonomy and voting rights.
Musicians, I urge you to join me in the fight against book bans, defending our First Amendment rights and safeguarding the personal freedoms of all Americans. Come stir up good trouble and take a stand! “We will not be banned!”
Singer/songwriter Joanie Leeds won a 2020 Grammy Award for best children’s album and in her new album, FREADOM, released Sept. 15, she and her band take on book banning through eight original songs that amplify love and inclusion.
Ed Sheeran’s years-long copyright battle — over whether he copied “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s iconic “Let’s Get It On” — isn’t over just yet.
Although one of Sheeran’s accusers dropped their case last month, a separate set of plaintiffs filed their opening salvo at a federal appeals court on Friday (Sept. 29), setting the stage for years more litigation and a ruling that could revive the case against the pop star.
“The district court’s erroneous decisions should be reversed, and appellant’s case restored so that it can proceed to trial,” Sheeran’s accusers wrote in their opening brief to the appeals court.
Sheeran was first sued over “Thinking Out Loud” by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. It was that long-running case that culminated in a May jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing. Last week, Kathryn Griffin Townsend’s lawyers dropped their efforts to overturn that verdict, ending that leg of the legal battle.
But Sheeran has long faced a separate, closely related case filed by an entity called Structured Asset Sales (owned by industry executive David Pullman) that controls a different one-third stake in Townsend’s copyrights. In May, weeks after the big jury verdict, a federal judge tossed out that case, too, ruling that it was seeking an “impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”
Unlike Griffin, however, Structured Asset Sales seems ready for a long appellate battle.
In their opening brief Friday at the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit, Structure Asset Sales’ lawyers cited a wide range of supposed errors by Judge Louis Stanton in that May ruling dismissing the case, including his decision about “musical building blocks.”
But they mostly focused on what they said was a far more basic error: that Judge Stanton refused to let them cite the famous recorded version of “Let’s Get It On” in making their case. Instead, the judge ruled that Structured Asset Sales owned only the rights to a “deposit copy” — the basic notation filed at the Copyright Office decades ago to secure a copyright registration. That erroneous holding, the company’s lawyers said, “severely” limited their rights and unfairly hurt their ability to win the case.
“Musical notation is a way of trying to capture the ephemeral in the physical, but it is and has always been limited in its ability to capture every nuance of the work,” Structured Asset Sales’ lawyers wrote. “Deposit copies do not, and were never meant to be, a limitation on the scope of the copyright they represent.”
Structure Asset Sales’ lawyers also called into question the timing of Judge Stanton’s ruling, which came just weeks after the jury verdict in the Griffin case and seemingly reversed his own previous decision that the case would need to go to trial. In an unusual flourish, the company’s lawyers said the judge’s logic was “a mystery.”
An attorney for Sheeran did not immediately return a request for comment. Sheeran’s legal team will file their own appellate brief in the months to come.
Las Vegas police made an arrest on Friday morning (Sept. 29) in one of the most vexing high-profile cold cases in the city’s history. According to the Associated Press, Las Vegas PD arrested Duane “Keffe D” Davis in connection with the unsolved drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur on the Las Vegas strip on Sept. 7, 1996.
The unsolved murder of the legendary rapper in a brazen nighttime assault on the city’s most famous boulevard had vexed authorities and fascinated the public for nearly 30 years, spawning a number of documentaries, investigative TV series, books and theories about who gunned down the then-25-year-old MC.
Davis was reportedly arrested early Friday morning, with the exact charges he was taken in on not announced at press time; two officials with first-hand knowledge of the arrest said Davis was expected to be indicted later in the day.
The 60-year-old alleged member of the South Side Compton Crips street gang was the uncle of gang member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, long considered the prime suspect in Shakur’s killing. Anderson was beaten by the rapper and his entourage on the night of the murder, allegedly in retaliation for Anderson’s role in snatching a Death Row chain at a Los Angeles Mall in July 1996; Anderson, 23, who denied involvement in the Shakur murder, was shot and killed in 1998 in a gang shooting and was never charged with the killing.
Las Vegas PD announced in July that they had searched Davis’ Henderson, Nevada home in connection with the Shakur murder investigation, though they did not give any additional information at the time about what they found or what spurred the search.
NBC News reported at the time that a copy of the warrant it obtained noted that authorities were looking at computers and other electronic devices, as well as audio recordings and that they took away a Pokeball USB drive, a black iPhone, two iPads and a purple Toshiba laptop, among other items.
Shakur was gunned down inside a black BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight when it was stopped at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip on the night of a Mike Tyson fight. A white Cadillac pulled up next to the passenger side of Tupac’s car and someone inside fired 14 rounds. Hit four times, Shakur was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died a week later. The unsolved case has spawned a number of conspiracy theories about the murder, including allegations that it was tied to the similarly unsolved murder of the Notorious B.I.G. in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997 as part of a media-whipped East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry.
In 2018, Davis claimed in an episode of BET’s Death Row Chronicles that he knew the name of Shakur’s killer, though he did not supply one at the time, even as he said Anderson could have been the gunman. Davis also claimed in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, that he was in the Cadillac on the night of the shooting and has described himself as the last living witness to the incident. No arrests had previously been made in the decadeslong investigation and Nevada does not have a statute of limitations for prosecuting homicide cases.
Retired LAPD detective Greg Kading — who spent years investigating the Shakur murder and wrote a book about it — interviewed Davis in 2008 and 2009 during the LAPD ‘s investigation into the Shakur and Smalls killings. He told the AP that he thought the Shakur investigation gained momentum recently after Davis’ description of his role in his memoir.
“It’s those events that have given Las Vegas the ammunition and the leverage to move forward,” Kading told the AP before Davis’ arrest. “Prior to Keefe D’s public declarations, the cases were unprosecutable as they stood… He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy,” Kading said of Davis. “He had acquired the gun, he had given the gun to the shooter and he had been present in the vehicle when they hunted down and located both Tupac and Suge (Knight).”
Lizzo has lodged her first legal response to the lawsuit brought by three of her former dancers in August.
In what amounts to a 31-point rebuttal against claims that the dancers were subjected to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment while on tour with the singer, Lizzo and her Big Grrrl Big Touring company are requesting that the court dismiss the case with prejudice (meaning it cannot be refiled). In the event the court declines to dismiss it, the defendants are requesting a jury trial.
In the original complaint, filed Aug. 1 in Los Angeles court, dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez accused Lizzo (real name Melissa Jefferson) and Big Grrrl Big Touring of several allegations. Among them: that Lizzo pressured dancers to attend a sex show in Amsterdam and interact with the nude performers; that dance team captain Shirlene Quigley repeatedly engaged in behavior that made them feel uncomfortable; that Lizzo “called attention” to a dancer’s weight gain following a performance; that employees of the touring company singled out Black dancers by accusing them of “being lazy, unprofessional and having bad attitudes”; and that Lizzo denied dancers bathroom breaks during an “excruciating re-audition” process.
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The new document — filed Wednesday by Lizzo’s lawyers, Martin Singer, Michael Weinsten and Melissa Lerner — offers more than 30 wide-ranging defenses to the dancers’ complaint. They include:
That the plaintiffs “ratified, acquiesced, condoned, and/or approved of the acts or omissions of Defendants, in whole or in part, about which Plaintiffs now complain”;
That the defendants’ alleged conduct “was undertaken in good faith and with good cause” and “undertaken for legitimate reasons reasonably related to one or more lawful business purposes”;
That the plaintiffs are “guilty of unclean hands,” which in legal terms means they have done something unethical and should therefore be denied relief;
That the plaintiffs should be barred from pursuing the case based on the doctrine of estoppel, meaning they have acted unfairly or made false representations in bringing the lawsuit;
That the plaintiffs failed to “mediate in good faith pursuant” to their contract terms with Big Grrrl Big Touring and are subject to arbitration under those terms;
That the claims are preempted by California’s Workers’ Compensation Act and should therefore be decided by the workers’ compensation appeals board as opposed to the court;
That if the plaintiffs were harmed as alleged, the plaintiffs and/or others who are not listed as defendants “contributed, in whole or in part,” to that harm;
That the defendants’ alleged actions arose from the exercise of their rights of free speech and/or religion;
That plaintiffs failed to “avail themselves” of internal anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and complaint procedures while employed on the tour;
That plaintiffs’ claims regarding discrimination or retaliation should be barred because any employment decisions were made “for legitimate, non-discriminatory, non-pretextual reasons and Defendants acted out of business necessity”;
That the plaintiffs “have failed to plead and cannot establish facts sufficient to support allegations of malice, oppression or fraud”;
That defendants are not liable for punitive damages because they did not “engage in wrongful conduct,” “authorize or ratify any wrongful conduct,” or “have advance knowledge of the unfitness of any employee and employ that employee with a conscious disregard of the rights and safety of others.”
“This is the first step of a legal process in which Lizzo and her team will demonstrate that they have always practiced what they’ve preached — whether it comes to promoting body positivity, leading a safe and supportive workplace or protecting individuals from any kind of harassment,” said Lizzo spokesperson Stefan Friedman in a statement. “Any and all claims to the contrary are ridiculous, and we look forward to proving so in a court of law.”
In response to the new filing, the dancers’ attorney, Neama Rahmani, released the following statement: “Lizzo’s answer merely consists of boilerplate objections that have nothing to do with the case. That said, the key takeaway is that Lizzo is agreeing to our clients’ demand for a jury trial. We look forward to presenting our case in court and letting a panel of her peers decide who is telling the truth, Lizzo and her team who continue to shame the victims or the plaintiffs and so many others who have come forward sharing similar stories of abuse and harassment.”
Though this is Lizzo’s first legal response to the lawsuit, the singer categorically denied the dancers’ claims two days after it was filed, stating on social media that the allegations were as “unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed.”
“These sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional,” she added. Later that day, the dancers appeared on CNN This Morning to rehash their allegations and called Lizzo’s statement “disheartening” and “incredibly frustrating.”
Two weeks later, Lizzo’s Big Grrrls dance team released a statement in support of the singer, saying they “had the time of our lives” on the tour and continuing, “The commitment to character and culture taking precedence over every movement and moment has been one of the Greatest lessons and Blessings that we could possibly could ask for.”
The Aug. 1 lawsuit is the first of two that have been brought against Lizzo. Earlier this month, the singer — along with her wardrobe manager Amanda Nomura, tour manager Carlina Gugliotta and Big Grrrl Big Touring — were sued by clothing designer Asha Daniels, who alleged sexual and racial harassment, disability discrimination, assault, illegal retaliatory termination and more while working on Lizzo’s Special tour.
The second lawsuit dropped the same day Lizzo was due to receive the Black Music Action Coalition’s Quincy Jones Humanitarian Award at the organization’s 2023 gala.
While accepting the honor that evening, Lizzo — who was introduced by cast members from her Emmy-winning reality show, Watch Out For the Big Grrrls — gave an emotional speech in which she said, “I’m going to continue to be who I am, no matter who’s watching. I’m going to continue to amplify the voices of marginalized people because I have a microphone and I know how to use it. And I’m going to continue to put on, represent and create safe spaces for Black fat women because that’s what the f— I do!”
She continued, “This support right now means the world to me.”
On Tuesday (Sept. 26), singer-songwriter Rick Astley settled the vocal impersonation lawsuit he filed in January against meme rapper Yung Gravy and his collaborators for an undisclosed sum.
Filed in Los Angeles court, the lawsuit had claimed that while Yung Gravy and his collaborators secured rights to re-record the melody and lyrics of his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” for their track “Betty (Get Money),” they “flagrantly impersonated” Astley’s distinctive vocals from the original track, thereby infringing his so-called right of publicity. “Betty (Get Money)” peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 on Billboard‘s Hot Rap Songs chart.
Rights of publicity laws, which vary state by state, protect public figures from the commercial exploitation of their names, voices and likenesses without their authorization. Astley argued that by mimicking Astley’s voice in a “nearly indistinguishable” way, Gravy’s team “obliterated” Astley’s chance to “collaborate with another artist and/or producer to create something new with his voice from ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’” and take advantage of other commercial opportunities.
The lawsuit arrived just as emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools had sparked new conversations around right of publicity protections for artists. The debate hit a fever pitch in April when an anonymous TikTok creator named Ghostwriter made headlines with his song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which employed an AI voice filter to deepfake the voices of Drake and The Weeknd without their knowledge or consent. Since then, some leaders, including Universal Music Group’s general counsel/executive vp of business and legal affairs, Jeffery Harleston, have called for a federalized right of publicity to protect artists against the seemingly growing issue.
Notably, Gravy’s song did not employ AI to mimic Astley’s trademark tone. Instead, “Betty (Get Money)” producer Nick “PopNick” Seeley recreated Astley’s voice the old-fashioned way: through trial and error in the studio. In a previous interview with Billboard, Seeley said he has “a knack for vintage stuff” and has also helped recreate older recordings for other songs, including “I Like It” by Cardi B and “Dirty Iyanna” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again.
In a previous interview with Billboard, producer Marc “Fresh2Def” Soto — half of the duo ClickNPress –said it’s common for producers to be asked to recreate older songs as closely as possible. “A record label will be like, ‘Hey we can’t get the clearance for the sample, but we can get an interpolation, would you be able to replay XYZ thing?’ I’ve been through that on several records with different labels,” Soto says. However, most of these so-called “replays” of old songs don’t end up being quite as exact as the one in Astley’s case.
Astley was represented by attorney Richard S. Busch, the same lawyer who represented Marvin Gaye’s family in the controversial “Blurred Lines” trial. Gravy and the other defendants were represented by attorney Michael J. Niborski.
Busch and Niborski did not immediately respond to Billboard’s requests for comment.
