Legal
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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.”
Just days before a trial is set to kick off in Los Angeles over whether Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion, prosecutors are adding a third felony count to the charges against the R&B singer.
With jury selection for the trial already underway this week, the L.A. district attorney’s office on Monday (Dec. 5) added a new count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence. Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) was already facing one count of assault with a firearm and another gun possession charge.
Lanez was already facing 22 years in prison over the original charges. It’s unclear if that maximum sentence would be larger if Lanez is convicted on all three counts, but the new charge by itself could still carry a years-long sentence and gives prosecutors another avenue to win a conviction if the more serious charges don’t stick.
George Mgdesyan, Lanez’s lead attorney in the case, did not immediately return a request for comment on the new charge. Beyond confirming the new count, prosecutors declined to comment, including on why the new charge was filed.
Lanez was charged in October 2020 over the July 2020 incident, in which he allegedly shot Stallion in the foot during an argument after a pool party in the Hollywood Hills. Stallion had initially told police officers that she cut her foot stepping on broken glass, but days later revealed 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.
Lanez pleaded not guilty in November 2020. At a December 2021 hearing, a Los Angeles judge allowed the case to move forward to a trial. During that hearing, a police detective testified that Stallion had told him that Lanez yelled “Dance, bitch!” as he opened fire around her feet, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Jury selection kicked off on Monday and opening statements are set for Dec. 12, with a verdict expected by Christmas. Stallion herself is expected to testify at some point during the trial; it’s unclear whether Lanez will take the stand himself.
For the past few months, Lanez had been under house arrest after an incident in September during which he allegedly assaulted singer August Alsina in Chicago. But on Monday, over protests from prosecutors, Judge David Herriford released him so that he could better prepare with attorneys for the trial.
The family of country singer Naomi Judd on Monday filed a notice to voluntarily dismiss a lawsuit that sought to block journalists from accessing the police investigation records surrounding her death.
Judd died on April 30 at her home in Tennessee at the age of 76. Her daughter Ashley has previously said that her mother killed herself, and the family said she was lost to “the disease of mental illness.”
Judd’s family filed a petition in Williamson County Chancery Court in August seeking to seal the report of the death investigation. The petition said the records contained video and audio interviews with relatives in the immediate aftermath of Judd’s death. Releasing such details would inflict “significant trauma and irreparable harm” on the family, the petition said.
The notice filed on Monday said the family is now willing to have the lawsuit dismissed. In part that is because the journalists who requested the police records are not requesting photographs of the deceased or body cam footage taken inside the home. The notice also said a state lawmaker is introducing a bill that would make death investigation records private where the death is not the result of a crime.
The voluntary dismissal is subject to approval by a judge.
Judd, 76, killed herself with a gun on April 30 at her home in Tennessee. “We have always shared openly both the joys of being family as well its sorrows, too. One part of our story is that our matriarch was dogged by an unfair foe,” read a statement from the family in August. “She was treated for PTSD and bipolar disorder, to which millions of Americans can relate.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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 on Monday (Dec. 5), officials said.
The Lady Gaga connection was a coincidence, authorities have said. The motive was the value of the French bulldogs, a breed that can run into the thousands of dollars, and detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the musician.
James Howard Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Jackson and others drove around Hollywood, the city of West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley on Feb. 24, 2021 “looking for French bulldogs,” prosecutors said previously. They found Lady Gaga’s dog walker, Ryan Fischer, with the pop star’s three pets.
Jackson shot Fischer during the robbery, during which two of the dogs were taken. A nearby doorbell camera recorded the dog walker screaming “Oh, my God! I’ve been shot!” and “Help me!” and “I’m bleeding out from my chest!”
Fischer later called the violence a “very close call with death” in social media posts. The dogs were returned several days later by a woman who was also charged in the crime.
Jackson also admitted the allegation of inflicting great bodily injury and to a prior strike, the DA’s office said Monday. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
“The plea agreement holds Mr. Jackson accountable for perpetrating a coldhearted violent act and provides justice for our victim,” the office said in a statement.
Lady Gaga’s representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.
Guns N’ Roses has an appetite for litigation.
The iconic ’80s rock band is suing a gun retailer that’s using the name “Texas Guns and Roses,” arguing that the name infringes the band’s trademark rights — and that they especially don’t want to be associated with firearms or “polarizing” political views.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Dec. 1) in Los Angeles federal court, GNR said the Houston-based retailer — operating under the corporate name Jersey Village Florists LLC — is clearly using the name to dupe consumers into thinking the band had somehow endorsed the business.
That would be bad no matter what the company was selling, but GNR’s lawyers said it was “particularly damaging” to the band “given the nature of Defendant’s business.”
“GNR, quite reasonably, does not want to be associated with defendant, a firearms and weapons retailer,” wrote the band’s lawyers, hailing from the law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP. “Furthermore, defendant 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.”
According to GNR’s lawsuit, Texas Guns and Roses claims to sell actual roses on its website, but the band says it’s all a ruse: “This is a contrivance to purportedly justify defendant’s wholesale appropriation of the ‘Guns N’ Roses.”
In addition to trademark infringement, the band accused Texas Guns and Roses of so-called trademark dilution — a form of legal wrongdoing where someone uses your trademark in such a way that can “tarnish” its value. Linking a brand name to undesirable associations like a dangerous product or offensive views can form the basis for such claims.
Jersey Village Florists could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
It’s not the first time Guns N’ Roses has taken legal action over its name. Back in 2019, the band filed a similar trademark infringement lawsuit against Colorado craft brewery Oskar Blues after it launched a “Guns ‘N’ Rosé” ale. (The case quickly settled.) And in 2020, the band successfully petitioned the U.S. trademark office to block the grocery chain Aldi from registering “Sweet Cheddar of Mine” as a trademark for cheese.
HOUSTON (AP) — An attorney for a man accused of fatally shooting rapper Takeoff last month said Monday that the musician’s death outside a Houston bowling alley was a tragedy but that her client says he’s innocent of the crime.
Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, made a brief court appearance in which prosecutors and his defense attorneys agreed to hold a bond reduction hearing on Dec. 14. Clark was arrested on a murder charge last week and is jailed on a $2 million bond.
Clark, handcuffed and dressed in orange jail clothing, did not say anything during Monday’s hearing. Letitia Quinones, one of Clark’s attorneys, told reporters after the hearing that Clark is feeling “nervous and he’s concerned” because “he’s being charged with something that he believes he’s innocent of, so how would anyone do in that type of circumstance?”
Prosecutors declined to comment Monday.
Takeoff, 28, was shot in the head and back as more than 30 people were leaving a private party at the bowling alley. Houston police said at a news conference Friday that the gunfire followed a disagreement over a “lucrative” game of dice around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, but that Takeoff was not involved and was “an innocent bystander.”
Police have said another man and a woman suffered non-life-threatening gunshot injuries, and that at least two people opened fired. Police said investigators are still trying to track down witnesses.
Born Kirsnick Khari Ball, Takeoff was the youngest member of Migos, the Grammy-nominated rap trio from suburban Atlanta that also featured his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said last week that investigators didn’t know whether Clark was invited to the party or if he knew Takeoff. Clark works as a DJ, according to court records.
Asked Monday if Clark knew Takeoff, Quinones said, “We really don’t want to go into the facts at this point.”
She said that Takeoff’s death was a “tragedy and it’s happening well too often in our communities.”
“There is a lot of investigation that needs to be done. … So, we just ask that everyone keep an open mind and let the system do its part and let the Constitution do its part and that is, right now he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty,” Quinones said.
Court records indicate Clark was arrested as he was preparing to leave the country for Mexico after getting an expedited passport and that he had a “large amount” of cash.
Quinones said that Clark had been planning to go to Mexico on a vacation but had canceled his trip before his arrest.
“He wasn’t trying to go anywhere,” Quinones said.
Migos first broke through with the massive hit “Versace” in 2013. They had four Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, though Takeoff was not on their multi-week No. 1 hit “Bad and Boujee,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert. They put out a trilogy of albums called Culture, Culture II and Culture III, with the first two hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
In the weeks before his death, Takeoff and Quavo put out Only Built for Infinity Links. Takeoff hoped the joint album would build respect for his lyrical abilities, telling the Drink Champs podcast, “It’s time to give me my flowers.”
More than two dozen Taylor Swift fans are suing Live Nation over Ticketmaster’s botched sale of tickets to her Eras tour last month, accusing the company of “anticompetitive conduct,” fraud and other forms of wrongdoing.
In a complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles court – the first known lawsuit over the fiasco – attorneys for the Swift fans called the sale a “disaster” and pinned the blame on Ticketmaster, which they called a “monopoly that is only interested in taking every dollar it can from a captive public.”
“In markets without a singular, monopolistic company, charging prices and fees like Ticketmaster would be impossible,” lawyers for the fans wrote. “And Ticketmaster does not do anything to justify these higher costs. Ticketmaster’s service is not superior or reliable; the massive disaster of the Taylor Swift presale is evidence enough of this.”
In addition to antitrust violations, the lawsuit accused Ticketmaster of intentionally misleading fans ahead of the sale – both by offering more presale codes than it had tickets to sell, and by allowing bots and scalpers into the sale. And because of the company’s unfair control over the secondary resale market, the Taylor fans say Ticketmaster was “eager to allow this arrangement.”
“Ticketmaster claimed that only those with codes would be able to join the presale, but millions of buyers without codes were able to get tickets,” the accusers wrote in the lawsuit. “Many of those without codes were scalpers, and Ticketmaster benefited from scalped tickets as they must be resold on Ticketmaster, who gets an additional fee.”
The new lawsuit came three weeks after the infamous Nov. 15 presale, which saw widespread service delays and website crashes as millions of fans tried – and many failed – to buy tickets for Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour.
Ticketmaster has apologized to fans and pinned the blame on a “staggering number of bot attacks” and “unprecedented traffic.” But that explanation has seemingly not been enough for many of the company’s critics, who have resurfaced longstanding complaints about the outsized power Ticketmaster and Live Nation have wielded in the market for live music since they merged in 2010.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill have called for renewed antitrust scrutiny, and news broke days after the presale that the U.S. Department of Justice had already been investigating Live Nation for potential antitrust violations. Attorneys general in a number of states have also launched their own probes, looking to see whether any state-level consumer protection or antitrust laws were breached.
The new lawsuit echoed those gripes, saying that artists like “have no choice but to work through Ticketmaster” and that “virtually all major music concert ticket sales” are handled by the service. The company then leverages that control to dominate secondary ticket re-sales, the Taylor fans allege, giving the Ticketmaster an incentive to allow bots and scalpers into presales.
“Ticketmaster has stated that it has taken steps to address [scalping], but in reality, has taken steps to make additional profit from the scalped tickets,” lawyers for the Taylor fans wrote. “Ticketmaster forces purchases of tickets from its site to use only Ticketmaster’s Secondary Ticket Exchange for the resale of those tickets. Ticketmaster then gets the higher fees paid by fans who have no choice but to pay for the ‘right’ to use the Ticketmaster Secondary Ticket Exchange platform.”
Whether such claims will be legally successful remains to be seen. Proving that a company violates antitrust laws is no easy task, and linking those supposed violations to actual harm suffered by the spurned Swift fans will be equally difficult.
A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.
A talent manager who allegedly helped artists like Vampire Weekend and Marshmello gain access to $200 million in COVID-19 relief funds is the target of a new lawsuit that claims he stole the idea to tap those government funds — aimed primarily at helping venues, not artists — from somebody else.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 30) in Los Angeles court, longtime music agent Laurence Leader says he was the first to realize that artists might also be able to access Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, a COVID-era federal program that gave out more than $14 billion to help live venues shuttered by the pandemic.
But Leader claims his “novel idea” was quickly stolen by talent manager Michael Oppenheim, who then allegedly used the same scheme to secure more than $200 million in SVOG funds for his own clients at the talent firm NKSFB, including Vampire Weekend, Marshmello, Common, Lil Wayne and many others.
In a complaint seeking more than $30 million in damages, Leader called Oppenheim’s conduct “despicable” and an “outright betrayal” of his trust.
“This lawsuit is brought due to the blatant and brazen theft by defendants of [Leader]’s novel idea for popular mainstream artist and band clients to obtain a grant under a specific government program,” wrote attorneys for Leader’s company, London Calling Entertainment.
Oppenheim did not immediately return a request for comment. Leader’s lawsuit, filed by veteran music litigator Richard Busch, was first reported by the news outlet Puck.
Launched by the U.S. Small Business Administration in April 2021, Shuttered Venue Operators Grants were designed to do exactly what they sound like — provide financial aid to live venues and others companies closely related to them, like vendors that provide services for live events. According to the last report issued by the SBA in July, more than $14 billion was handed out to more than 20,000 businesses.
Though the SVOG funds were a lifeline during COVID for many venues, some have argued they were left out. Dozens of venues have filed lawsuits against SBA over the past two years, claiming they were unfairly denied millions in aid.
In his lawsuit, Leader claims he was the first to discover that touring artists might also qualify for the program. Even though he says others doubted him, he believed that one definition of SVOG eligibility — “performing arts organization operators” — sounded “precisely” like the so-called loan-out companies that artists use to handle their touring businesses.
When Leader used that approach and tried applying for an unnamed jazz musician in June 2021, it was an immediate success: He says his client was quickly awarded nearly $10 million in SVOG money.
Leader says he soon shared his grant idea with Oppenheim, whom he says he’s known professionally for more than 40 years. But Leader claims he shared the SVOG concept “confidentially,” with the clear understanding that he could only be used if Leader was paid a 15 percent commission on grants secured.
Oppenheim initially believe the plan would not work and voiced “skepticism,” Leader’s lawyers say, and eventually went “radio silent” on the entire thing. But Leader claims he later discovered that the talent manager and his firm NKSFB had in fact boldly embraced the idea — allegedly filing successful SVOG applications for more than 70 of their client artists.
“As a direct and proximate result of defendant’s misuse of plaintiff London Calling’s idea … defendants obtained SVOG program grants totaling well in excess of $200 million,” Leader’s lawyers wrote.
Leader doesn’t claim that his idea is a piece of intellectual property, like a patent, copyright or trade secret, since it almost certainly wouldn’t qualify for any such formal protection. As the case is litigated, Oppenheim’s attorneys might argue back that no single person should be able to claim proprietary rights to the process of merely applying for a public government aid program.
But Leader says he and Oppenheim forged an “implied contract” that his valuable idea — helping artists access an otherwise off-limits program — would remain confidential unless Leader was compensated. By using the same scheme for his own ends without payment, Leader says Oppenheim breached that contract.
In monetary terms, he’s seeking $30 million in damages — or a 15 percent cut of the $200 million that Oppenheim allegedly secured in grants. Leader also wants an unspecified amount of “punitive” damages on the grounds that the breach of contract was “willful and malicious.”
Read Leader’s entire lawsuit here: