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Valentina Trespalacios, a trailblazing DJ whose career was about to take off, was found dead on Sunday (Jan. 22). Her boyfriend, John Poulos, was arrested and charged with the alleged murder at Panama’s Tocumen International Airport, the Panamanian National Police said, according to CNN.
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Her body was found in a blue suitcase in a garbage container on the outskirts of Bogota, the news network reported.
Poulos denied the charges during a hearing in Bogota, according to CNN, and his defense is arguing that due process was not respected. Another hearing is set for Jan. 31.
A DJ deeply engaged in the world of guaracha, a Colombian dance genre, Trespalacios emerged at 23 as one of the country’s promising DJs.
“We are shocked by the violent death of Valentina. She was a dreamer, a skilled DJ and potential producer who was working on several projects, including an album,” David Sarria, creator of Black & White, one of Colombia’s most memorable electronic festivals, tells Billboard.
Poulos, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen, fled Colombia but was detained Jan. 24 as he was about to board a flight to Turkey. The National Police of Panama shared video on Twitter of him being escorted by law enforcement, noting in a subsequent tweet that he was trying to head to Istanbul.
La Policía Nacional informa que Interpol Panamá detectó la presencia del ciudadano estadounidense Poulos John Nelson, tras la alerta dada por la República de Colombia, por el homicidio de la DJ Valentina Trespalacios. pic.twitter.com/fDkaE65gRj— Policía Nacional (@ProtegeryServir) January 25, 2023
His arrest followed a swift investigation by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office, which collected evidence against him — including Trespalacios’ cell phone, which was recovered at Bogota’s El Dorado Airport, according to Colombia’s El Tiempo — and obtained his extradition to Colombia. He has been charged with aggravated murder and obstruction, modification and disappearance of evidence, according to the paper.
CNN reports that per Colombia’s Institute of Legal Medicine, Trespalacios died from mechanical suffocation, and that it appeared her body had been subjected to force before she died. El Tiempo also reported that her autopsy report showed signs of strangulation, and that her head, chest and other body parts had experienced blows.
The murder of Trespalacios has shocked the country and the music industry. She debuted in 2019 in the local electronic music scene, winning a prize at the Colombia Dance Awards, which has recognized the best DJs in the country for 12 years.
“She was one of the most explosive rising stars in Colombia’s clubs,” Pablo Silva, the awards’ creator, tells Billboard. “In 2019 she took home the Breakthrough DJ of the Year trophy and never stopped.”
Trespalacios made her way in tech house, and had been doing guaracha, the dance genre from Colombia that combines tribal house, cumbia and Latin. The genre is a phenomenon in the country’s youth parties.
Though she was young, Trespalacios had the opportunity to perform with some of her idols, such as Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Steve Aoki, Erik Morillo and Markus Schullz.
Trespalacios was laid to rest on Jan. 26.
A federal judge ruled Friday that hundreds of artists cannot join forces to sue Universal Music Group to regain control of their masters, saying the case raised big questions about “fairness” but that it was ill-suited for class-action litigation.
The ruling came in a closely-watched case brought by “Missing You” singer John Waite and others over copyright law’s “termination right.” The rule is supposed to let authors take back control of their works, but the lawsuit claims UMG has flatly ignored that requirement when it comes to sounds recordings.
Waite wanted to certify the case as a class action — a make-or-break move that would have allowed hundreds of UMG artists to bring their claims as a single lawsuit, represented by a single set of lawyers.
But in a crucial ruling issued Friday, Judge Lewis Kaplan denied that request, citing the complex and unique questions raised by each individual artist’s relationship with UMG.
“Plaintiffs’ claims raise issues of fairness in copyright law that undoubtedly extended beyond their own grievances,” the judge wrote. “However, the individualized evidence and case-by-case evaluations necessary to resolve those claims make this case unsuitable for adjudication on an aggregate basis.”
Waite and other artists sued UMG in February 2019, claiming the label had effectively refused to honor the termination right. The case was filed as a proposed class action, aiming to eventually represent hundreds of others in a similar situation. A nearly-identical case was filed on the same day by the same attorneys against Sony Music Entertainment, claiming it had adopted a similar stance on terminations.
According to the lawsuits, the labels have long claimed that sound recordings – unlike the underlying musical compositions controlled by music publishers – are effectively never subject to the termination rule. The basic argument is that most recordings are so-called works for hire, meaning the label essentially creates them itself and simply hires artists to contribute to them.
In seeking to pull hundreds of other artists into the lawsuit, lawyers for the artists argued that UMG has made those “fictitious” and “erroneous” arguments “in every instance” that an artist invokes the termination right – meaning they represent the kind of “systematic wrongful conduct” that is best addressed by a huge class action.
But in Friday’s decision, Judge Kaplan disagreed. “The … analysis requires understanding for each artist the circumstances in which the recordings were produced, the creative involvement, if any, of the record label, and the types of resources and payments the record label provided the artist.”
To decide if a record really was produced simply as a work for hire, the judge said tricky questions would need to be answered for each separate artist. Judge Kaplan said the evidence indicated that UMG sometimes only provided “big picture approval authority,” which could help an artist prove their right to terminate. But for other artists, he said the label was “more involved in the creative process.”
“Did the record label agree on the lyrics and music with the artist?” the judge asked. “Did the record label select the producers and sound engineers to work on the sound recordings? What level of substantive artistic feedback, if any, did the record label provide?”
The ruling is not necessarily a death-knell for the lawsuit against UMG, which will now proceed on behalf of Waite and a handful of others. Evan Cohen, the attorney who represents the artists, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The case could still make a big impact, class-or-no-class. Countless other artists have similar arrangements with record labels over highly-lucrative masters, but the legal arguments about when sound recordings are subject to the termination right have thus far only been lightly tested in court. A final ruling in favor of Waite could provide key legal ammo for those other artists, even if they need to bring their own cases.
A representative for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.
But it will doubtless be a severe logistical hurdle for such cases actually being filed, since they’re expensive to litigate and artists typically lack the same kind of legal resources as the major labels who have denied their termination requests. A class action would have allowed the artists to pool their resources and secure a sweeping decision with only a single set of legal costs.
Friday’s decision will not directly apply to the similar proposed class action against Sony, which has been on pause for months as the two sides attempt to strike a settlement. But the new ruling, issued by a judge in the same federal court district as the Sony case, certainly does not bode well for that case being certified as a class action.
Read the entire decision here:
When does a soundalike song sound a little too much alike?
Rick Astley is suing Yung Gravy over the rapper’s breakout 2022 hit that heavily borrowed from the singer’s iconic “Never Gonna Give You Up,” alleging that the new track — an interpolation that sounded a whole lot like an outright sample — broke the law by impersonating Astley’s voice.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday (Jan. 26) in Los Angeles court, Astley claims that Gravy’s “Betty (Get Money),” which reached No. 30 on the Hot 100 last year, violated the singer’s so-called right of publicity because it closely mimicked the distinctive voice Astley used in the chart-topping 1987 hit.
“In an effort to capitalize off of the immense popularity and goodwill of Mr. Astley, defendants … conspired to include a deliberate and nearly indistinguishable imitation of Mr. Astley’s voice throughout the song,” Astley’s lawyers wrote. “The public could not tell the difference. The imitation of Mr. Astley’s voice was so successful the public believed it was actually Mr. Astley singing.”
Pulling heavily from a song that boomed in recent years thanks to “Rickroll” internet memes, “Betty” was a major hit for Yung Gravy. But it often drew attention largely for its connections to Astley; the New York Times called it “a real-life rickroll that functioned as a comedy song, a TikTok trend and a nostalgia trip all at once.”
In their new lawsuit, Astley’s lawyers said the singer was “extremely protective over his name, image, and likeness,” meaning the unauthorized use of the soundalike voice had caused him “immense damage.”
Representatives for Gravy (real name Matthew Hauri) and Universal Music Group’s Republic Records (also named in the lawsuit as the label that released “Betty”) did not immediately return a request for comment.
Thursday’s new lawsuit raises big questions about the methods used in the music industry to legally borrow from older songs, an ever more popular tactic in a nostalgia-heavy age.
When they created “Betty,” Gravy and his team allegedly cleared the underlying musical composition to “Give You Up.” That gave them the legal right to recreate music and lyrics from the original in their new track — a process known as “interpolating.”
But the lawsuit says Gravy and his team weren’t able to secure a license to use the actual sound recording of the famous track — the better-known process of “sampling.” That would mean they didn’t have any right to directly copy the exact sounds, including Astley’s voice.
Instead, Astley says they hired Popnick (real name Nick Seeley) to imitate Astley’s “signature voice” on the track. At one point, the lawsuit quotes from an Instagram video in which Popnick said he wanted the song to “sound identical” to Astley voice.
By doing so without permission, the lawsuit claims that Gravy and Popnick violated Astley’s right of publicity — the legal right to control how your name, image or likeness is commercially exploited by others.
“A license to use the original underlying musical composition does not authorize the stealing of the artist’s voice in the original recording,” Astley’s lawyers wrote. “So, instead, they resorted to theft of Mr. Astley’s voice without a license and without agreement.”
Astley’s allegations rely heavily on a 1988 federal court ruling, in which Bette Midler successfully sued the Ford Motor Co. for violating her right of publicity by running a series of commercials featuring a Midler impersonator. In that case, the court sided with Midler even though Ford had obtained a license to the underlying song.
The new lawsuit was filed by Richard Busch, a prominent music litigator best known for winning the blockbuster copyright case over “Blurred Lines.” In a statement to Billboard, Busch said: “Mr. Astley owns his voice. California law is clear since the Bette Midler case more than 30 years ago that nobody has the right to imitate or use it without his permission.”
In addition to violating Astley’s right of publicity, the lawsuit also accuses Gravy of violating federal trademark law by making false statements that made it appear that the singer had endorsed the new song. In an interview with Billboard, Gravy said he had spoken with Astley and that the singer had approved of the new song — that he “fucks with the song.”
“These statements were all false,” Astley wrote in his lawsuit.
Live Nation is not legally responsible for a deadly 2014 shooting backstage at a Young Jeezy concert, a California appeals court says, because such an attack was not the kind of event that the concert giant should have seen coming.
In a ruling issued Tuesday (Jan. 24), the California Court of Appeal refused to revive a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Eric Johnson, Jr., an event promoter who was shot to death during an August 2014 stop at a San Francisco-area venue during Jeezy’s Under the Influence of Music tour.
Johnson’s family claimed that Live Nation had been legally negligent because it didn’t have enough security measures in place to prevent the shooting, but the appeals court ruled that the attack was not “foreseeable” — a key requirement in proving such allegations.
“A violent attack by and between artists and their guests in the backstage area of a performance is not a foreseeable occurrence against which Live Nation should have provided preventative measures of the nature plaintiffs suggest,” Justice Stuart R. Pollak wrote in Tuesday’s opinion.
In its ruling, the appeals court suggested that Live Nation likely had good reason to be worried about incidents involving the crowd, citing reports that fights had broken out at previous events. But the court said those same red flags did not exist for potential violence backstage.
“The reports did not … indicate that any of the artists or their entourages engaged in or posed any danger of violence during the tour,” the judges wrote in the ruling. “The head of security also indicated that in her more than 10 years at the amphitheater, there had not been any violent incidents backstage.”
Attorneys for Johnson’s family did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday. A representative for Live Nation also did not return a request for comment on the ruling.
The ruling in favor of Live Nation came as the company is facing a similar case over the high-profile stabbing death of Drakeo The Ruler at the Once Upon A Time in L.A. music festival in December 2021. Filed by the late rapper’s family, that case also centers on security measures Live Nation took — or didn’t take — that might have prevented a fatal assault backstage.
Johnson, 38, was shot and killed backstage on Aug. 22, 2014, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif., a venue leased and operated by Live Nation. According to his family’s lawsuit, Johnson had been at the event to “discuss his business arrangements for Young Jeezy to appear at a concert after-party” in nearby San Jose.
According to press reports at the time, Jeezy (real name Jay Jenkins) was taken into police custody in the wake of the shooting and charged with illegal possession of a weapon. But that charge was later dropped and no additional charges were ever filed against the rapper over the incident.
“Mr. Jenkins should not have been arrested and this case should not have been prosecuted,” Jeezy’s attorney told Billboard at the time. “We are pleased it has been dismissed, although frustrated that it took the police and prosecutors months to do the right thing.”
Court records indicate that no murder charges have ever been filed against anyone over Johnson’s killing.
Earlier versions of the civil lawsuit filed by Johnson’s family directly accused Jeezy of committing the shooting, but those claims were later dropped. They were replaced by allegations similar to those made against Live Nation, claiming the rapper’s allegedly negligent conduct was partly to blame for the attack taking place.
On Tuesday, in addition to rejecting the allegations against Live Nation, the California appeals court also dismissed the claims against Jeezy. The court ruled that the family had waited too long to bring the claims, and were thus barred by the statute of limitations.
Jeezy’s attorney declined to comment on the decision.
Read the full ruling here:
A man whose back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped into a Cardi B album cover is once again asking a federal judge to revive his failed case against the rapper, arguing that the star “engaged in theatrics” on the witness stand and deprived him of a fair trial.
Weeks after Judge Cormac Carney ruled there had been enough evidence to support Cardi’s courtroom victory, Kevin Brophy formally requested a new trial Wednesday, seeking another chance to convince a jury that she “humiliated” him with the risqué cover of her 2016 Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1.
Among other things, Brophy took aim at Cardi herself, arguing that the star (real name Belcalis Almánzar) had committed “misconduct” on the witness stand by sparring with Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello.
“Almanzar repeatedly engaged in theatrics, refused to answer basic questions, impermissibly disclosed privileged and confidential settlement communications, and generally acted with total disregard and disrespect for the jury’s time and formal nature of court proceedings,” Brophy’s lawyers wrote.
Citing supposedly calm behavior when examined by her own lawyers – “a switch in demeanor that puts Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to shame” – the filing called Cardi’s testimony a “a deliberate strategy to frustrate Plaintiff’s presentation of his case and improperly influence the jury.”
Brophy sued Cardi in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of Cardi’s Gangsta Bitch. The image featured the then-rising star taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide, and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body.
Brophy’s lawsuit claimed Cardi and others involved in the cover had violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.” Cardi’s lawyers called the allegations “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown,” arguing that nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back.
During a four-day trial in October, Cardi took the stand to defend herself. When examined by Brophy’s attorney Cappello, things repeatedly got heated between the two – so much so that at one point the Judge Carney cleared the jury, told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line,” and threatened to declare a mistrial.
At the end of the trial, the jury agreed with the superstar’s defenses, clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims. Brophy later asked the judge to throw out the verdict for a lack of evidence, but the judge denied that motion in December.
In addition to criticizing Cardi’s testimony, Brophy’s new motion on Wednesday also argued that his lawyers had been denied the chance to properly cross-examine the star, and that the judge had unfairly refused to let jurors hear about Cardi’s earlier defamation trial in Atlanta.
Attorneys for Cardi will have chance to file a formal response in court in the coming weeks. The star’s lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Read the entire motion for a new trial here:
A federal judge on Wednesday (Jan. 25) declared a mistrial in the high-profile courtroom battle pitting T.I. and wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris against toymaker MGA over a line of dolls, ending the proceedings after jurors heard inadmissible testimony claiming the company “steals from African Americans.”
A day after attorneys for MGA argued that the “inflammatory” testimony about cultural appropriation had ruined their chances of a fair trial, Judge James V. Selna agreed, granting a mistrial. That means the case will need to be re-tried in front of a new jury at some point in the future.
Following the mistrial, MGA told Billboard that “diversity has always been a key value” at the company: “We are disappointed that the trial was cut short, but look forward to vindicating our rights in the next trial.” An attorney for T.I. and Tiny did not immediately return a request for comment.
The ruling marks an abrupt end for the closely-watched intellectual property trial, in which T.I. and Tiny were trying to persuade a jury that MGA’s line of “OMG” dolls stole their look and name from the OMG Girlz, a defunct teen pop trio created by Tiny and starring her daughter Zonnique Pullins.
In their 2021 complaint, T.I. and Tiny alleged that MGA had committed both “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property,” stealing the look of a group of “young multicultural women.” The lawsuit included side-by-side images, aiming to show how each doll was directly based on a particular member of the OMG Girlz, who disbanded in 2015.
On the fifth day of the trial, jurors heard videotaped deposition testimony from a woman named Moneice Campbell, a former MGA customer. According to court documents, Campbell testified that she would no longer purchase the company’s products because MGA “steals from African Americans and their ideas and profit off of it.” She also said that “hundreds” of social media users had agreed with the accusations, citing the fact that “people often steal from the black community and make money off of it.”
Earlier in the case, Judge Selna had already expressly prohibited such testimony from the trial. In one such order, he ruled that statements about “cultural appropriation” were “immaterial and impertinent” to the actual legal issues at play in the case and could not be made in front of jurors.
In a written motion filed after Tuesday’s courtroom proceedings had concluded, MGA’s lawyers demanded an immediate mistrial, arguing that the impact of the inadmissible testimony on the fairness of the case “cannot be understated.”
“There is no way to unring the bell of the jury’s hearing Ms. Campbell’s emotionally charged accusations that MGA has been ‘stealing’ from the African-American community,” the MGA attorneys wrote. “Her improper testimony cannot be challenged, rebutted or cured without drawing further attention to it.”
A federal judge says Kanye West’s lawyers need to keep trying to reach their client a little bit longer before the judge will allow the attorneys to take an unusual step: printing newspaper ads announcing they’ve dropped the embattled rapper.
In an order issued Tuesday, Judge Analisa Torres denied – for now – a request by attorneys from the law firm Greenberg Traurig to take such extraordinary measures to formally cut ties with West (who has legally changed his name to Ye). The firm says it has “exhausted all methods” of contacting the rapper, but the judge is not yet convinced.
“The court finds that GT has not provided sufficient facts to support its conclusion that personal service is impracticable,” Judge Torres wrote. “GT’s latest attempts… do not indicate diligent efforts at attempting to locate Ye.”
Greenberg, one of many law firms to cut ties with Ye in the wake of his antisemitic statements last year, has been trying for months to legally notify the rapper that its lawyers will no longer be representing him in a copyright lawsuit album over a song off Donda 2. Judge Torres already approved their withdrawal, but federal litigation rules and legal ethics require lawyers to personally serve clients with formal notice that they’ve been dropped as a client.
It’s this process that Greenberg says Kanye is evading.
In a Jan. 13 request, they argued that the star was engaged in “deliberate avoidance and obstruction,” including ditching his previous representatives and changing his phone number. Faced with that obstinance, Greenberg lawyers asked earlier this month to let them notify him by mail – or to simply print the notice in public newspapers.
“Given Ye’s public status, publication of the withdrawal order will likely garner significant media attention, resulting in broader publication and provide an even greater likelihood of apprising Ye of the Order,” the Greenberg lawyers wrote in making the unusual request.
But in Tuesday’s order, Judge Torres said she would need to see more proof that Greenberg had truly run out of options. She suggested that the firm could show that it had used databases to search for a new address, or even “hiring private investigators” to locate the star.
The judge gave the firm a Feb. 15 deadline to either successfully serve notice on Kanye – or offer more detailed proof to support the newspaper plan. Kanye’s former lawyer at Greenberg did not immediately return a request for comment. A press representative for West could not immediately be located for comment.
Prosecutors in Kansas City, Missouri dismissed misdemeanor assault charges against Tool drummer Danny Carey on Monday (Jan. 23) in an incident that took place at the city’s airport in Dec. 2021. According to Fox 4, a spokesperson for the court did not give a reason for the dismissal of the charges, telling the outlet that the case was a “closed confidential matter” as of this week.
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Carey was arrested for misdemeanor assault at the Kansas City International Airport on Dec. 12, 2021 after allegedly getting into an altercation. Airport law enforcement received notice that evening of a “disturbance between two males at an airport terminal,” which resulted in Carey being arrested for misdemeanor assault and transported to a nearby Kansas City Police Dept. station.
The other man, whose name was not released at the time, was not taken into custody. Fox 4 reported that according to a ticket issued by officers, Carey intentionally inflicted injury when he allegedly yelled a homophobic slur at the unnamed victim while jabbing him in the chest with two fingers. TMZ video from the evening showed Carey being handcuffed at the airport and talking to officers outside the terminal, where he could be heard asking, “Who did I assault?”
At press time a spokesperson for Tool had not returned a request for comment from Billboard on the dismissal of the charges; a spokesperson for the Kansas City Prosecutor’s office had also not returned a request for comment at press time.
According to reports at the time, the Kansas-bred drummer performed in the stands with the school band during the University of Kansas’ basketball game against the University of Missouri the day before his arrest.
Actress Esme Bianco and Marilyn Manson have reached a settlement to end her sexual assault lawsuit against the rocker, one of several such cases accusing Manson of abuse.
In a filing made Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for both sides alerted the judge that they had “reached an agreement in principle” to “resolve” the case. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Jay D. Ellwanger, lawyer for Bianco, confirmed to Billboard that the actress had “agreed to resolve her claims against Brian Warner and Marilyn Manson Records, Inc. in order to move on with her life and career.” An attorney for Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Bianco was one of several women to accuse Manson of sexual abuse or other wrongdoing over the past two years.
Evan Rachel Wood, who began publicly dating Manson in 2007 when she was 19 and he was 39, accused him in a February 2021 Instagram post of “grooming me when I was a teenager” before he “horrifically abused me for years.” Those allegations were followed by separate lawsuits from model Ashley Morgan Smithline, former assistant Ashley Walters, and an unnamed Jane Doe accuser.
Bianco added her own lawsuit in April 2021, claiming Warner had, among other shocking allegations, “used drugs, force and threats of force to coerce sexual acts” and had “locked Ms. Bianco in the bedroom, tied her to a prayer kneeler and beat her with a whip that Mr. Warner said was utilized by the Nazis.”
Manson strongly denied the allegations, filing a motion to dismiss the case in which he accused Bianco of “cynically and dishonestly seeking to monetize and exploit the #MeToo movement.” He’s gone so far as to file a defamation lawsuit against Wood, claiming she had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously” with false allegations against the rocker. Wood denies the allegations and the case is pending.
Bianco’s lawsuit is the second against Manson to end in recent weeks. On Jan. 3, a federal judge dismissed Smithline’s case, citing the fact that she failed to retain a new lawyer after splitting with her old legal team last fall.
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 judge says Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez must sit for a deposition in Megan Thee Stallion’s war with her record company, a member of Journey sues his longtime bandmate over allegations of lavish spending, Flo Rida wins an $82 million verdict against a beverage company, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: To Depose Or Not To Depose
When should a top executive be hauled into a deposition to answer questions in a lawsuit? It’s a difficult question. Make it too hard and you could insulate powerful people from the legal process; make it too easy and attorneys could use it as a form of gamesmanship in cases of questionable merit. Imagine if Lucian Grainge could be deposed every time someone sued Universal Music?
Courts typically resolve the problem with something called the apex doctrine, which says that busy “apex” officials only need to testify when they have unique info that can’t be derived from other less burdensome sources. Spotify cited the doctrine last year in an (unsuccessful) effort to block the deposition of CEO Daniel Ek in a copyright lawsuit over Eminem’s music.
That same tricky situation cropped up last week in Megan Thee Stallion’s ongoing legal war with her estranged record label, 1501 Certified Entertainment. Industry bigwig Desiree Perez is the CEO of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation — the prototypical kind of executive who can sometimes avoid depositions. But she’s also Megan’s actual manager, and 1501 Certified said she was “one of the most critical” witnesses in the case.
In seeking to avoid the sit-down, Megan’s legal team argued that 1501 was “harassing” Perez by seeking to depose her. But in a ruling last week, the judge overseeing the case didn’t buy it.
To get the full story, go read Billboard’s entire article here.
Other top stories this week…
TOP RAPPER BATTLES EX-MANAGER – Billboard took a deep-dive this week into an ugly lawsuit pitting Latin trap star Anuel AA against his former manager Frabian Eli – two “lifelong friends” who are now accusing each other of serious legal wrongdoing. The latest flashpoint is an emergency hearing this week over whether Eli can sell a $4.8 million Florida mansion that Anuel claims was purchased with stolen money.
DON’T STOP LITIGATING – The civil war inside the iconic rock band Journey continues. Keyboardist Jonathan Cain filed a lawsuit against bandmate Neal Schon for allegedly spending over $1 million on the band’s shared American Express card, including $400,000 in a single month last year — itself a response to a case filed by Schon last year.
PUBLISHER POO-POOS PARODY Music publisher BMG launched a copyright lawsuit against toymaker MGA Entertainment for promoting a brand of “unicorn poop” toys by releasing a song called “My Poops” — a scatological parody set to the tune of the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.” Is that a legal fair use or just an unlicensed commercial? We’re going to find out.
FLO RIDA WINS BIG OVER ENERGY DRINKS – A jury awarded $82 million in damages to Flo Rida in his legal battle with energy drink maker Celsius, siding with the rapper’s allegations that the company reneged on the terms of an endorsement deal. His lawyers told me: “He was due these shares, he worked for them, and he wasn’t going to just let it go.”