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Just days after Lizzo shared an emotional “I quit” statement to Instagram, Los Angeles-based attorney Ron Zambrano, who is representing the dancers that are suing the “About Damn Time” singer for harassment, has shared a scolding statement in response.
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“It’s a joke that Lizzo would say she is being bullied by the internet when she should instead be taking an honest look at herself,” he wrote in the statement obtained by Billboard. “Her latest post is just another outburst seeking attention and trying to deflect from her own failings as she continues to blame everyone else for the predicament she is in. Lizzo’s legal and public relations strategy is a failure, so she is desperately trying to play the victim. She has thrown these childish tantrums before. No one actually believes she is quitting music. But she should quit sexually harassing, shaming and bullying her employees and finally accept responsibility for her actions.”
Zambrano’s statement continued, “She can make all of this go away simply by seizing the opportunity here to set an example, own up to her mistakes, pay what’s due to those she’s wronged and work on becoming a better person. Celebrity toxicity is poisoning the entertainment industry with Diddy and Dan Schneider being the latest examples, and Lizzo’s conduct will not be tolerated, either. There is no more safe place in society for this sort of behavior as the entire industry is in for a reckoning for permitting such vile treatment of employees in the workplace.”
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Billboard has reached out for Lizzo’s team for a response to Zambrano’s statement.
On Friday afternoon (March 29), Lizzo took to Instagram to express frustration over public criticism toward her. “I’m getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the Internet,” she wrote against an orange and yellow background. “All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better than how I found it. But I’m starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”
The singer continued, She continued, “I’m constantly up against lies being told about me for clout & views… being the butt of the joke every single time because of how I look… my character being picked apart by people who don’t know me and disrespecting my name. I didn’t sign up for this s— — I QUIT [peace out emoji].”
Lizzo has been under scrutiny over the past year, as she’s been involved in a harassment lawsuit brought by three of the “Special” singer’s former dancers in August 2023. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez, accuses Lizzo (real name Melissa Jefferson) and her Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. of a wide range of legal wrongdoing and included dozens of pages of detailed allegations. Lizzo denied the claims in a response shared to Twitter, calling them “false allegations” and “sensationalized stories.”
Linkin Park has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit that accused the band of refusing to pay royalties to an ex-bassist who briefly played with the band in the late 1990s.
In a statement issued on Friday, the band said it had reached an “amicable resolution” with Kyle Christner, who sued the band last year over claims that he had “never been paid a penny” for contributions he made during several months he was in Linkin Parkin 1999.
The dispute was sparked by an anniversary re-release of Linkin Park’s smash hit 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory, which holds the distinction as the best-selling rock album of the 21st century. Christner claimed he had contributed some of the material released on the anniversary box set – a claim confirmed by the band in Friday’s statement.
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“Kyle is a very talented musician who made valuable contributions to Linkin Park at a pivotal time in 1999,” Linkin Park wrote in Friday’s statement. “He performed with the band in several shows and many record label showcases. Kyle helped write and performed on many songs from that era, including some of the songs on the Hybrid Theory EP.”
The statement was accompanied by a joint filing in court seeking to formally end the lawsuit, signed by attorneys for both Christner and for Mike Shinoda and other Linkin Park members. Christner’s attorneys did not return a request for comment on Monday.
Christner sued in November, claiming he had been a member of the band for several months in 1999 until he was “abruptly informed” that he had been fired shortly before the band signed a record deal with Warner Records. He accused the band of continuing to profit from songs he helped create, while effectively erasing his involvement.
“Christner has never been paid a penny for his work with Linkin Park, nor has he been properly credited, even as defendants have benefitted from his creative efforts,” his lawyers wrote at the time.
In addition to Shinoda, the lawsuit also named Linkin Park’s other living members (Rob Bourdon, Brad Delson and Joseph Hahn), as well as its business entity, Machine Shop Entertainment, and the band’s label, Warner Records.
In particular, Christener pointed to the re-release of Hybrid Theory. He argued that the special 2020 box set included several songs to which he had contributed, including a never-before-released demo track that has amassed 949,000 views on YouTube.
Before Friday’s settlement, Linkin Park had been battling to dismiss the case. In a filing last month, the band argued that the case had been filed far too late and that the statute of limitations on such claims had “long since passed.”
“Defendants repudiated plaintiff’s purported ownership in any and all of the works mentioned in the [lawsuit] more than three years before plaintiff filed this lawsuit — and indeed for over two decades,” the band’s lawyers wrote at the time.
Pharrell Williams and producer Chad Hugo – who together formed the prolific songwriting duo The Neptunes – are now battling each other in a legal dispute over the group’s name, after Hugo accused Williams of “fraudulently” seeking sole control over the trademarks.
Before Williams was a solo star, The Neptunes produced a slew of radio hits in the early 2000s, including Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body.” The legendary duo, who have been friends since childhood, were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022.
But in a legal action filed last week at a federal tribunal, attorneys for Hugo accused Pharrell and his company of attempting to unilaterally register trademarks for the Neptunes name – a move they say violates their longstanding agreement that saw the pair split everything equally.
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“Throughout their over thirty year history, [Hugo] and Williams agreed to, and in fact, have divided all assets,” wrote Hugo’s attorney Kenneth D. Freundlich, a prominent music industry litigator. “By ignoring and excluding [Hugo] from the any and all applications filed by applicant for the mark ‘The Neptunes,’ applicant has committed fraud in securing the trademarks and acted in bad faith.”
In a statement to Billboard on Monday, a rep for Pharrell said there had been no ill-intent behind the disputed trademark filings: “Pharrell is surprised by this. We have reached out on multiple occasions to share in the ownership and administration of the trademark and will continue to make that offer. The goal here was to make sure a third party doesn’t get a hold of the trademark and to guarantee Chad and Pharrell share in ownership and administration.”
Hugo’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
At issue in the dispute are three separate applications to register “The Neptunes” as a trademark – one covering the use of the name on streaming music, another for music videos and other content, and a third covering live performances. They were filed in 2022 by PW IP Holdings LLC, Pharrell’s company that also owns such registrations for his band N.E.R.D., his Miami-based Goodtime Hotel, and numerous other brand names connected to the superstar.
In his legal filings last week, Hugo’s attorneys argued that Pharrell had “knowingly and intentionally” filed those applications without required input from Hugo, even though he was “fully aware” that either Hugo or their partnership entity should have been listed as a co-owner: “Nothing, either written or oral, provided Williams or [PW IP Holdings] with the unilateral authority to register the trademarks.”
Hugo’s attorneys said they’ve “repeatedly” contacted Pharrell’s team about the problem, and that the star’s lawyers had “admitted that [Hugo] is equal co-owner of the trademarks” and promised to include him — a claim that lines up with Williams’ statement on Monday.
But the case claims that sharing never actually happened, partly because Pharrell’s company has insisted on “onerous business terms” that would deprive Hugo of proper control and compensation. The petition did not specify what exactly those “onerous” terms included.
Last week’s filings targeted only with the three recent trademark applications, but Hugo’s case could potentially expand beyond them. That’s because Pharrell’s company already successfully registered The Neptunes name as a trademark for musical sound recordings, and has another pending application to register the name for clothing and other merch.
In his filing last week, Hugo’s lawyers said that the trademark registrations covering sound recordings “and possibly others” would be subject to a future legal action aimed at having them voided.
Christine Lepera might be one of the country’s top music litigators, but decades ago, she wasn’t even sure she still wanted to be a lawyer at all.
In 1986, just a few years after she graduated law school, she was working at a New York firm where she was “dissatisfied” and, like many young attorneys, faced existential questions about her chosen career path.
“I never intended to be a music lawyer, and after four years at a corporate firm on Wall Street, I was basically ready to quit the law entirely,” she recalls with a laugh.
Today, that’s hard to imagine. Lepera — who is chair of the music litigation group at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp (MSK) — for years has been one of the music industry’s go-to trial lawyers.
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She handles many different types of cases, from representing Daryl Hall in last year’s headline-grabbing battle with longtime partner John Oates that’s still pending to Dr. Luke in his just-settled defamation case against Kesha. But her primary specialty is defending superstar artists against allegations that they’ve stolen their songs from someone else.
Over the past year, Lepera has handled such copyright cases for Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Post Malone and others; previously, she has done similar work for Katy Perry, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), Drake, Ludacris and many more. For Lepera, who herself plays piano, working those lawsuits is not just about the people involved, but about their music — and their right to create without facing needless lawsuits.
“What I get the most enjoyment from is servicing the music,” Lepera says. “In many of these cases, what you’re dealing with is people who have not stolen anything and have just used basic musical building blocks. And the other side is literally trying to monopolize music that they shouldn’t.”
In recognition of her achievements, Lepera has been named Billboard’s 2024 Lawyer of the Year. Fellow partners Eric German, Bradley Mullins and David Steinberg join her on the Top Music Lawyers list.
Facing an impasse in her young career, Lepera turned to Martin Silfen — her former law professor at New York Law School and a music attorney who represented clients like Blondie, LL COOL J and Aerosmith — for advice. Silfen connected her with Leonard Marks, a legendary New York music attorney who counted Billy Joel, The Beatles and Elton John as clients over his long career.
The timing was just right. At that point, Marks was getting plenty of litigation business sent his way from John Eastman, another powerful industry attorney who is best known for representing Paul McCartney in his wranglings with the other members of The Beatles (prompted by their association with manager Allen Klein). The late Marks, whom Lepera fondly recalls as an eccentric attorney with you-can’t-believe-he’s-a-lawyer vibes, brought her into his small firm and gave her a shot.
“Len hired me, I started doing lots of entertainment cases and everything changed,” Lepera says.
From left: Attorneys Christopher Buccafusco, Christine Lepera and Carla Miller discussed how copyright law affects creators at a 2019 panel at Cardozo Law School in New York.
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One of the first major cases she handled was a copyright lawsuit filed in 1990 against Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber that accused him of stealing the title song from his smash hit The Phantom of the Opera from a Baltimore liturgical composer. The case dragged on for years, featuring countersuits, multiple appeals and an attempted appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before ending in the late 1990s with a victory for Lloyd Webber in a high-profile jury trial.
The long-running lawsuit provided plenty of material for the young music litigator to cut her teeth. “It was a 10-year extravaganza,” Lepera says, laughing. “And we won everything at the end of the day.”
In the years that followed, big music cases kept coming. In 2006, Lepera won a jury verdict clearing Ye and Ludacris of allegations that they had based their 2003 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit, “Stand Up,” on an earlier song. In 2015, she helped defeat a lawsuit claiming that Jay-Z and Timbaland had stolen material from an Egyptian composer for their 2000 smash “Big Pimpin’.” In 2017, Lepera won a ruling that Drake had made fair use of a spoken-word jazz track when he sampled it on his 2013 song “Pound Cake.”
The attorney’s trajectory culminated in 2022, when she won a federal appeals court decision that Perry’s 2013 single “Dark Horse,” another Hot 100 No. 1, had not infringed the copyright of an earlier song. It was not only a big win for the singer, overturning millions in damages, but also set an important legal precedent that individual songwriters cannot lock up simple musical “building blocks.”
For years, such lawsuits have been a source of anxiety for creators and companies alike, particularly in the wake of the controversial 2015 verdict that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ “Blurred Lines” had infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up.” In the years that followed, artists became more cautious about vetting their songs with musicologists, often preemptively offering writing credits to would-be accusers rather than risking a lawsuit.
But from Lepera’s perspective, song-theft lawsuits didn’t increase after the “Blurred Lines” verdict; rather, they’ve always just been an unfortunate byproduct of success. “You write a hit, you get a writ,” she jokes. In fact, she suggests the verdict had a positive impact: More artists are willing to fight back against questionable allegations and more courts are willing to scrutinize bad lawsuits.
“They’re going to fight and not give into this fear,” Lepera says of her clients and other modern artists. “Even though it’s a very draining, expensive, uncomfortable and uncertain process, I think we’re seeing very strong advocates turning around and deterring these kinds of cases.”
In the past year, Lepera fought battles inside and outside the copyright sector. She represented Lipa in two high-profile lawsuits that claimed the star had copied earlier songs when she wrote her megahit “Levitating.” In June, a federal judge dismissed one of them, agreeing with Lipa’s argument that she had never heard the song in question; the other case, where Lepera has made the same argument, is awaiting a decision. Lepera also won a ruling in September dismissing a lawsuit against Jay-Z, Timbaland and Ginuwine that claimed they had lifted material from an old soul tune for the songs “Paper Chase” and “Toe 2 Toe.”
Perhaps more notably, Lepera resolved the decadelong litigation by Dr. Luke against Kesha, in which her client claimed the pop star had defamed him when she accused him of rape in 2014. After years of litigation and appeals, a trial was set for July 2023; instead, a confidential settlement was reached in June. As part of the agreement, the two issued a joint statement in which Kesha said she “cannot recount everything that happened” while Dr. Luke maintained that he was “absolutely certain that nothing happened.”
The Dr. Luke v. Kesha case, which started years before the #MeToo movement and was heavily litigated throughout that period, sparked strong emotions on both sides and sometimes thrust Lepera herself into the spotlight. In deposition videos made public in 2019, Lady Gaga told her, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
When facing such situations as an attorney, Lepera says she sticks to the “facts and the law” of a given legal argument and is not intimidated by the celebrities involved or the PR dimensions that can accompany it.
“I can’t advocate a position unless I believe in it,” she says. “I have to truly believe in whatever it is I’m arguing. I’m not really emotional. I don’t have that trepidation of ‘Oh, look who I’m representing.’ ”
Another major 2023 case for Lepera was the public breakup of beloved duo Hall & Oates, in which she served as Hall’s lead counsel. In the dispute, which attracted heavy media attention thanks to sealed filings later becoming public, Hall accused Oates of violating their partnership agreement by unilaterally attempting to sell part of their joint entity to Primary Wave, a prominent music company that has acquired many catalogs in recent years.
As the case unfolded, it became clear the matter was deeply personal for Hall, who in legal filings called the alleged sale by Oates the “ultimate partnership betrayal” and said it specifically had been designed to hurt him after years of worsening relations between the duo. Oates later responded by calling the accusations “inflammatory, outlandish and inaccurate” and saying that they had left him “deeply hurt.”
In late November, after a climactic court hearing in Nashville, a judge sided with Hall and Lepera, putting the Primary Wave deal on hold and allowing an arbitrator time to decide Hall’s arguments against it. The dispute remains pending.
Due to the massive media attention, Lepera says the case has been “very painful, obviously, for both of them.” Bands, she says, are “almost like family,” and when things “fall apart at the seams” after a long career, there are bound to be intense feelings for all involved. After decades of handling such cases, she says the job of a good litigator is to understand and absorb that human dynamic, but also to channel it into a winning legal argument.
“My challenge is to be there to absorb and listen to that,” Lepera says, “but also to just cut through and get to the result that’s needed.”
This story originally appeared in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
After nearly 1,000 votes cast over three rounds of voting, Billboard Pro members selected Dina LaPolt, founder and owner of LaPolt Law, for the 2024 Top Music Lawyers Power Players’ Choice Award, which honors the attorney they believe had the most impact across the industry in the past year. With multiple industry roles — on […]
Attorneys for Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge fired back at a lawsuit that claims he and the label “aided and abetted” Sean “Diddy” Combs in his alleged sexual abuse, saying the accusations are so “offensively false” that they plan to seek legal penalties against the lawyer who filed them.
In a motion to dismiss all claims against UMG and Grainge, the label’s lawyers blasted attorney Tyrone Blackburn for filing “knowingly false allegations” of criminal wrongdoing “without the slightest factual or legal basis.” They said they would seek so-called sanctions against him in a future filing.
“A license to practice law is a privilege,” wrote Donald Zakarin, a longtime music industry litigator who represents UMG and Grainge. “Mr. Blackburn, plaintiff’s lawyer, has misused that license to self-promote, gratuitously, falsely and recklessly accusing the UMG defendants of criminal behavior.”
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The Wednesday filing came in response to a lawsuit filed last month by a producer named Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, who says the rapper sexually assaulted and harassed him. The lawsuit is one of several abuse cases filed against Combs, in addition to an apparent federal criminal investigation that led to raids of his homes this week. Combs has strongly denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
But the case filed by Jones went far beyond a simple assault claim, arguing that Diddy, Grainge and many others had also violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – the federal RICO statute that’s more often used in criminal cases against mobsters and drug cartels. He also accused the various defendants of violating federal sex trafficking laws.
In Wednesday’s filing, UMG’s lawyers said those claims were “entirely invented by Mr. Blackburn.”
“The [complaint] hurls accusations of criminal racketeering and criminal sex trafficking against the UMG defendants, respected individuals and companies having utterly nothing to do with plaintiff’s claims,” Zakarin wrote Wednesday’s filings. “These accusations are recklessly false and, but for the fact that they are embodied in a complaint, would be libelous.”
In addition to the original allegations, UMG’s lawyers also sharply criticized Blackburn for filing a second, updated complaint this week – a filing that they claim drastically altered the allegations. In his filing, Zakarin called it the worst lawyering he had seen in nearly 50 years as an attorney.
“In all that time, I have never seen any attorney display anything remotely like the utter indifference shown by Mr. Blackburn towards his obligations as an attorney,” Zakarin wrote. “I have never seen any lawyer, in any pleading, in any court, accuse people and companies of criminal conduct without the slightest basis and then try to file an amended pleading completely jettisoning every allegation underpinning the original claims and substituting completely different and irreconcilable allegations to support the very same claims.”
In a letter to the judge Thursday, he called the UMG motion a “public relations stunt” that had been filed in bad faith. “They did not have any issues marrying themselves to Mr. Combs when it was popular. Now, suddenly … they are treating Mr. Combs like he has the plague,” Blackburn wrote in the letter.
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, Blackburn said: “UMG should produce their financial records. Let’s see what the money was used for. Stop trying to escape liability.”
A spokesman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment on the motion.
Travis Scott is asking to be dismissed from the sprawling litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, arguing that safety and security at live events is “not the job of performing artists.”
More than 2,500 people have sued over Astroworld, which left 10 dead and hundreds injured after a crowd crush during Scott’s Nov. 5 show. They claim Scott (real name Jacques Bermon Webster II), Live Nation and other organizers were legally negligent in how they planned the event, and are collectively seeking billions in damages.
But in a motion filed Monday in Houston court, Scott’s attorneys (led by prominent litigator Daniel Petrocelli) argue that the rapper himself cannot be held liable for the tragic incident. Even though the event was promoted under Scott’s name and branding, his lawyers say that he was merely an onstage performer who is not responsible for ensuring audience safety.
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“Like any other adrenaline-inducing diversion, music festivals must balance exhilaration with safety and security—but that balance is not the job of performing artists, even those involved in promoting and marketing performances,” Petrocelli wrote. “Which only makes sense: Performing artists, even those who engage in certain promotional activities, have no inherent expertise or specialized knowledge in concert safety measures, venue security protocols, or site-design.”
And even if Scott could be theoretically held liable because of his involvement as a promotor, his lawyers say the evidence shows that he did enough to avoid any claims of negligence or other wrongdoing – arguing that he “acted diligently to protect against every reasonably apprehensible danger.”
“When, during festival planning, concerns arose about the risk of a stampede occurring in the festival site, the Scott defendants supported festival organizers’ efforts to eliminate that risk by agreeing to remove certain rides and other attractions at the site,” Petrocelli writes. “Then, when the Scott defendants were told to end the show after Mr. Scott’s guest performer finished performing, they did just that—ending the show as directed.”
The lawsuits over Astroworld, combined into one single large action in Texas state court in Houston, have spent much of the last two years in discovery, as the two sides exchange information and take depositions of key figures. Scott was deposed in October, facing questioning from plaintiffs attorneys for roughly eight hours, according to the Associated Press.
The first trial in the massive litigation is currently scheduled to start on May 6, according to court records.
With that trial date looming, many of the defendants named in the case are currently asking to be dismissed from the litigation. Earlier this month, a similar request was filed by Drake (Aubrey Graham), who was named in many of the lawsuits because he appeared on stage as a guest performer during Scott’s deadly show.
“Mr. Graham did not receive any security briefings, was not informed of any crowd control issues, injuries or deaths in the crowd, or any stop show orders at any time either before or during his 14-minute performance,” Drake’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In his motion on Monday, Scott makes similar arguments. He says that his involvement in planning was limited to “creative control” and marketing, and that he and his team were “neither responsible for nor involved in the approval of venue security, safety, or site layout decisions.”
“No one disputes that tragedy struck the Astroworld Festival,” Petrocelli wrote. “But promoting and performing at a concert do not equate to the power to control a crowd or to design a venue safely. Basic tort principles prevent imposing liability on the Scott defendants for a tragedy arising from forces legally controlled by others.”
03/27/2024
The rapper was sued by his ex Cassie in November 2023; it was settled 24 hours later. Here’s what has happened since.
03/27/2024
A rapper popular on TikTok must pay Sony Music more than $800,000 in damages for using a copyrighted sample without permission, a federal judge ruled Wednesday (March 27), saying that the big fine would teach him a six-figure “lesson” about “carefully selecting the materials included in his raps.”
Sony sued Trefuego (real name Dantreal Daevon Clark-Rainbolt) in 2021, accusing him of using a “blatant” sample from a 1986 Japanese instrumental song in his “90mh” — a track that Sony claimed had been featured in 155,000 TikTok videos and streamed 100 million times on Spotify.
After struggling to locate him, a federal judge ruled last year that the 20-year-old rapper had, in fact, infringed Sony’s copyrights. And in a follow-up ruling Wednesday, that same judge ordered him to hand over a whopping $802,997 — covering roughly $700,000 he earned in profits from Spotify and other platforms, and approximately $100,000 he would pay Sony in licensing fees.
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“The court hopes this case will serve as a $802,997.23 lesson for defendant in carefully selecting the materials included in his raps,” U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman wrote in his decision.
The judge also ordered Trefuego to pay ongoing royalties, including a 50% cut of publishing revenue and a 20% cut of recording revenue, and to repay $2,230 in legal costs incurred by Sony.
“Sony pursued a reasonable, non-frivolous claim to vindicate infringement of its copyrighted work,” Judge Pittman wrote. “Some may query the wisdom of pursuing a claim against a relatively small fish like Trefuego, but that fact does not render Sony’s motivation improper or their lawsuit unreasonable.”
Sony has been chasing Trefuego in some form since January 2021, when the company notified him that it believed “90mh” was built on an illegal sample of “Reflections,” a 1986 song by Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata. After filing takedown requests in August 2022 to get the song pulled, Sony finally launched its lawsuit that December.
In its complaint, the label pointed out that Hinata’s song had seen a recent surge of popularity after an appearance in Netflix’s 2020 film Tigertail and placement on popular ambient music playlists on Spotify.
“Trefuego brazenly sought to ride the coattails of Hinata’s creativity and popularity without regard to the United States copyright laws or the rights of plaintiffs,” the label’s attorneys wrote at the time. “He used and copied plaintiffs’ work without so much as asking, or paying a cent to plaintiffs, and he continued to exploit that music despite plaintiffs’ demand that he stop.”
Sony’s lawsuit took a bizarre detour last year when Judge Pittman ruled that the label could forgo traditional methods of contacting Trefuego and instead simply send him direct messages on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Soundcloud. In doing so, the judge ruled that Sony had made “extensive efforts” and “gone to great lengths” to find Trefuego in real life, including “seven separate attempts” to serve him and hiring a private investigator.
In one particularly notable effort, Sony’s representatives apparently went “to his mother’s house on Mother’s Day in hopes that he would be there to celebrate with her” but still came up empty: “Sadly, he was not there, and his own mother claimed she did not know who he was,” the judge wrote.
With those procedural issues settled, Judge Pittman ruled on the case in November — and sided decisively with Sony. Though the judge noted that the case pitted “one of the largest international entertainment conglomerates on the planet” against “a twenty-year-old kid,” he ruled that the David-and-Goliath posture would not protect Trefuego from liability.
“To quote ’90mh’, this case involves a young man who was ‘too focused on getting dough’ to understand the broader implications of purchasing a creative work without proof of originality or license-to-use,” the judge wrote in his November decision. “To quote ‘90mh’ again, Trefuego likely imagined Sony wouldn’t ‘really want smoke’ enough to prosecute this claim. But they did.”
Neither Trefuego nor a spokeswoman for Sony Music responded to requests for comment.
Attorneys for Madison Square Garden executive James Dolan are firing back at a lawsuit that alleges he pressured a masseuse into unwanted sex while his band was touring with the Eagles, calling his accuser an “opportunist” who is “looking for a quick payday.”
In a motion filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, Dolan’s lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, in which a woman named Kellye Croft claims that Dolan coerced her into “unlawful and unwelcome sex acts” on repeated occasions during the 2013 tour.
Arguing that the allegations were “completely manufactured,” Dolan’s attorneys told the judge that it is “an unfortunate truth that some men, by virtue of their status, have become targets for opportunists looking for a quick payday.”
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“If this case were to proceed … plaintiff would be exposed as such an opportunist, and her claims would be soundly rejected for the lies that they are,” Dolan’s attorney lead counsel E. Danya Perry wrote. “But this action should never reach that stage, as plaintiff’s complaint is entirely deficient.”
Dolan is the majority owner/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a live music giant that operates the famed New York City arena in addition to Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the Las Vegas Sphere and other prominent venues.
Croft sued him in January, claiming she had been hired to serve as a massage therapist for Glenn Frey during the 2013 tour, on which Dolan’s band (JD & The Straight Shot) opened for Eagles. She says she thought the job was the “opportunity of a lifetime,” but that she quickly realized the real reason she was there: “Dolan was extremely assertive, and pressured Ms. Croft into unwanted sexual intercourse.”
The lawsuit also claimed that Dolan later facilitated an incident in which Croft was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer whose many sexual assault allegations helped spark the #MeToo movement in 2017. Dolan previously served as a director at The Weinstein Company, and the lawsuit claimed that the two moguls were “close friends and business partners.”
In Monday’s response, Dolan’s attorneys took particular exception to the Weinstein allegations, calling them “scandalous and irrelevant” claims that had been designed to compensate for flaws in the case: “This transparent reliance on headline-grabbing, yet legally baseless, accusations of liability-by-association cannot save plaintiff’s case.”
Dolan’s motion also argued that the inclusion of Weinstein was actually a “fatal” weakness in one part of the case. They claimed that bankruptcy proceedings for The Weinstein Company resulted in a court order releasing all former directors from allegations that they aided and abetted Weinstein’s conduct — one of the claims leveled against Dolan in the complaint.
In a response statement on Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Douglas Wigdor called Dolan’s argument “shameful” and said his client had not participated in or benefited from the Weinstein bankruptcy, or even been notified of it.
“To somehow suggest that Dolan should receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card for his alleged intentional acts of trafficking our client, shows the extent to which he is willing to go to avoid having to defend the facts of our case,” Wigdor wrote.
Separately on Monday, attorneys for companies owned by music executive Irving Azoff also filed their own response to the case. While the lawsuit mostly centered on Dolan’s alleged conduct, it also accused the Azoff Company of violating federal sex trafficking laws by “facilitating Dolan’s behavior.”
In their motion, Azoff’s attorneys demanded not only that the claims be dismissed, but that Croft and her lawyers be legally sanctioned for filing “frivolous and vexatious” allegations without any real evidence to support them.
“As was explained to plaintiff’s counsel before the suit was commenced, the Azoff entities have never participated in any sex trafficking venture, and the complaint does not allege a single fact plausibly or remotely suggesting otherwise,” wrote the Azoff Company’s attorney Daniel Petrocelli.
“The decision by plaintiff and her counsel to include [such claims] in a federal pleading with nodiligence or investigation in order to publicly and falsely charge the Azoff Entities with despicable, illegal conduct fully justifies the imposition of … sanctions.”
In one portion of Croft’s complaint, her lawyers included a photograph of Dolan, Azoff and Weinstein standing together in 2015, saying that “these men were close to one another, and thus almost certainly knew details about each other’s personal lives.”
But in Monday’s motion seeking to dismiss the case and punish Croft’s lawyers, Azoff’s attorneys called the inclusion of Weinstein in the complaint a “gratuitous and unavailing” tactic that had been designed to prove “guilt-by-association” in the absence of any real evidence.
“Grasping at straws, plaintiff tries to link Weinstein to the Azoff entities by a single photo of Dolan, Weinstein, and Irving Azoff at an advertising trade conference in 2015,” Petrocelli wrote. “Awarding the Azoff entities their reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs in bringing this motion would deter plaintiff’s counsel from asserting such baseless, bad faith claims in the future.”
In his statement Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Wigdor called those arguments “meritless” and reiterated the allegations against Azoff’s companies: “We look forward to defeating these motions and moving forward with this litigation.”