Legal
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A London appeals court on Thursday (Mar. 14) overturned the murder conviction of Jamaican dancehall star Vybz Kartel, ruling that the 2014 guilty verdict was tainted by allegations that one juror attempted to bribe others.
The ruling came more than a decade after Kartel — a popular Jamaican artist who has worked with Rihanna, Jay-Z and others — and three others were convicted in Kingston, Jamaica of the 2011 killing of an associate named Clive “Lizard” Williams, whose body was never found.
In the decision, the appeals court ruled that the judge overseeing the 2014 trial had made a “fatal” error: allowing the jury to proceed to a verdict despite news that one of the jurors had attempted to bribe others. That juror was not removed, and soon after the jury returned a guilty verdict.
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“There should have been no question of allowing Juror X to continue to serve on the jury,” the appeals court wrote Thursday. “Allowing Juror X to continue to serve on the jury is fatal to the safety of the convictions which followed. This was an infringement of the defendants’ fundamental right to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court.”
The decision came from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a London court that decides last-resort appeals from certain countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations, including Jamaica.
The ruling overturned Kartel’s conviction and his 32-year prison sentence, but he could still face a retrial on the same accusations. The appeals court said that Jamaican courts would decide whether such a trial will take place.
Kartel — along with co-defendants Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John — faced a 64-day jury trial in early 2014 over accusations that they had killed Williams after he failed to return two unlicensed firearms they had lent him.
But on the final day of the trial, the judge was told that Juror X had attempted to “persuade another member of the jury” to acquit the defendants by offering bribes of 500,000 Jamaican dollars (roughly $3,200 US).
After receiving that information, the judge was faced with an unusually difficult choice. Because another juror had already been discharged over a separate issue, the only choice was to end the trial entirely after weeks of testimony or allow the case to continue to a verdict.
“It might have been possible simply to discharge a miscreant juror and to allow the remaining members of the jury to return verdicts [but] that was not possible here,” the appeals court wrote Thursday.
Though the appeals court said it had “considerable sympathy with the judge’s dilemma,” it said the decision to proceed with the problematic juror had been a “serious irregularity” that would result in a “miscarriage of justice” if allowed to stand.
“In coming to this conclusion, the Board is mindful of the very serious consequences which may flow from having to discharge a jury shortly before the end of a long and complex criminal trial,” the appeals court wrote, noting that England has statutes aimed at dealing with such situations.
“However, in the absence of such a provision — and there is no such provision in Jamaica — there will be occasions on which, as in the present case, a court will have no alternative but to discharge a jury and end the trial in order to protect the integrity of the system of trial by jury,” the court wrote.
Kelly Clarkson’s ongoing legal battle with ex-husband Brandon Blackstock is expanding with a new lawsuit aimed at potentially going much further than the $2.6 million ruling she won against him last fall.
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With Blackstock currently appealing that November decision, Clarkson filed a new case Monday in Los Angeles court, seeking a ruling that he and his father’s management firm had been violating state labor rules all the way back to back to the very start of their relationship.
Clarkson’s new lawsuit is seeking an order that would require the return of “any and all commissions, fees, profits, advances, producing fees or other monies” she paid to Blackstock’s father’s company, Starstruck Entertainment, dating back to 2007 – much further back than the earlier judgment, which only reached back to 2017.
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The new case is the latest development in a sprawling legal battle between the two ex-spouses, who split in 2020 after seven years of marriage. The divorce itself was finalized in 2022, but that personal settlement didn’t resolve tricky business entanglements with Blackstock’s father’s firm, which managed her for years.
Shortly after Clarkson filed for divorce, Starstruck sued her for millions in allegedly unpaid fees, claiming it had “invested a great deal of time, money, energy, and dedication” into her and had “developed Clarkson into a mega superstar.”
Clarkson responded by filing a complaint with California’s Labor Commissioner, arguing that Blackstock and Starstruck had violated California’s Talent Agencies Act (TAA) by serving not just as her personal managers, but as unlicensed talent agents who booked business deals.
In November, Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower ruled that Blackstock had indeed procured a number of deals for Clarkson, including her lucrative role as a judge on The Voice, that should have been handled by her talent agents at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). The decision ordered Blackstock to repay Clarkson more than $2.6 million in commissions she paid to him for handling those deals.
In December, Blackstock and Starstruck challenged that ruling in court, demanding that same questions be re-decided by a Los Angeles judge rather than by the Labor Commissioner. That case remains pending and is set for a hearing in August.
With her new lawsuit, Clarkson could win a ruling that would effectively confirm the findings of the Labor Commissioner. But the case could also give her a vehicle to expand the Commissioner’s decision – a ruling that went her way, but also rejected some of her core claims against Blackstock and Starstruck.
For instance, the commissioner rejected Clarkson’s claim that Blackstock was also required to pay back commissions he earned from helping to secure The Kelly Clarkson Show — which could have seen him owe much more. His involvement in that deal, including “strategizing” with her agents, was clearly “at the request of CAA” and thus not a violation of the law, the commissioner ruled.
An attorney for Blackstock did not immediately return a request for comment.
After a marriage of seven years, Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020. The case was finalized two years later, with the singer agreeing to pay her ex-husband monthly child support of $45,601 for their two children, plus a one-time payment of just over $1.3 million.
A criminal case against YoungBoy Never Broke Again over federal gun charges must be put on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a closely-watched Second Amendment battle this spring, a federal judge says — likely delaying a trial that had been scheduled to start in July.
In an order Wednesday (Mar. 13), U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick said she would wait to proceed until after the justices had issued their gun-control ruling since the Supreme Court’s looming decision will likely touch on the same Second Amendment questions at play in NBA YoungBoy’s case.
YoungBoy’s lawyers say the law he’s accused of breaking — a ban on convicted felons possessing firearms — is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, which protects the right to “keep and bear arms.” The pending Supreme Court case, meanwhile, will decide the constitutionality of a similar federal ban on gun ownership for domestic abusers.
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After years of house arrest, YoungBoy (Kentrell DeSean Gaulden) had finally been set for a trial in July. Wednesday’s order will likely delay that trial since it could be June before the high court even rules on the pending case. But the delay might be worth it: If the Supreme Court rules against the gun restrictions in that case, it could greatly help YoungBoy beat his charges altogether.
The rapper’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
YoungBoy was indicted by federal prosecutors in March 2021 after he was allegedly found with two guns during a September 2020 incident in Baton Rouge, La. He was charged with violating a long-standing federal law that bans convicted felons from ever again possessing guns — a rule that applied to him because he was convicted in 2017 of aggravated assault with a firearm.
In a motion filed last month, attorneys for the rapper argued that the charges against YoungBoy must be dismissed without trial because that federal ban violates the Second Amendment. They cited a landmark gun control ruling issued by the high court in 2022, which struck down a New York state law that had placed strict limits on carrying guns outside the home.
Echoing the language of that ruling, YoungBoy’s lawyers said the federal felon-in-possession statute was similarly unconstitutional because it was “inconsistent with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
“This prosecution seeks to restrict and deny Mr. Gaulden’s Second Amendment right to possess a firearm based solely on his status a felon and his alleged failure to comply with bureaucratic regulations,” the star’s attorneys told the judge.
In a response this month, federal prosecutors sharply disagreed, arguing that the gun ban for convicts had already been upheld in “hundreds of cases” since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. They acknowledged that a few judges had ruled otherwise, but that the “overwhelming majority of courts” had continued to enforce the law.
In Wednesday’s order, Judge Dick said she could not decide those arguments until the Supreme Court rules on United States v. Rahimi, the pending case challenging a federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders. The case, argued last fall, is expected to be decided by June.
It’s difficult to predict how the Supreme Court might rule on a given case, but the tea leaves don’t look good for YoungBoy’s position. After arguments in the Rahimi case in November, Reuters reported that the court “appeared inclined to uphold the legality” of the domestic violence gun restrictions, with several justices suggesting the Second Amendment wouldn’t stop the government from banning “dangerous” people from owning guns.
Whenever the Supreme Court rules on the Rahimi case, YoungBoy and federal prosecutors will have 14 days to file briefs on how the case should proceed.
Drake is pushing to be dismissed from the sprawling litigation over the 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival, arguing that he had nothing to do with planning the deadly event and can’t be sued for simply showing up for a brief guest appearance.
More than 2,500 people have sued over the 2021 Astroworld event during which a crowd of fans rushed toward the stage during Scott’s Nov. 5 performance, leaving 10 dead and hundreds injured. Though the lawsuits mainly target Scott, Live Nation and other organizers, Drake was also named as a defendant in some cases because he appeared on stage during Scott’s deadly performance.
But in a motion filed Friday (Mar. 8) in Houston court, attorneys for Drake (real name Aubrey Drake Graham) argued that the star should not be involved in the case at all. They said he had no involvement in Astroworld beyond being asked to take the stage — and that festival organizers had “confirmed under oath that Mr. Graham was not involved in any planning.”
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They also say that Drake was unaware of any safety problems before he took the stage. “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.”
Instead, they say that Drake merely “arrived at the venue at approximately 7:30 PM and remained largely secluded backstage in a trailer until approximately 9:54 PM,” at which time he was “informed to take the stage.” The star then “immediately took the stage as requested, performed for approximately 14 minutes, and then exited the stage at 10:08 PM.”
The lawsuits over Astroworld claim that organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, including by failing to provide adequate security and emergency support. The cases, combined into one single large action in Houston, are seeking billions in potential damages. Much of the last two years has been spent in discovery, as the two sides exchange information and take depositions of key figures.
In Friday’s motion, Drake’s lawyers argued that the discovery process had resulted in “hundreds of hours” of depositions and “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents,” but that none of it had established that Drake could be held liable for negligence.
“Plaintiffs produce no evidence that Mr. Graham actually knew of any risk in the Festival site design and layout, competence or adequacy of Festival staffing and personnel, or emergency procedures such as show stop authority,” his lawyers wrote.
The alleged victims, represented by an array of plaintiffs law firms, will have a chance to respond to Drake’s motion in the weeks ahead.
Attorneys for Bad Bunny have filed a lawsuit against a fan who posted videos from a recent concert to YouTube, arguing the Puerto Rican rapper was essentially forced to sue after the alleged bootlegger demanded that YouTube keep the clips online.
In a complaint filed Friday in federal court, attorneys for Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio) claimed Eric Guillermo Madroñal Garrone posted videos covering ten songs from a February concert in Salt Lake City to his YouTube channel “MADforliveMUSIC,” infringing copyrights and “luring” viewers to his page.
Worse yet, the lawsuit claims, when Bad Bunny submitted a takedown request to YouTube, Garrone responded with a formal counter-notice defending his right to post the clips. That move would legally require YouTube to repost them – unless, that is, Bad Bunny went to court to stop them.
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“Defendants have objected to the removal of the unauthorized bootlegs from YouTube, refused to agree not to re-post the unauthorized bootlegs, and requested that YouTube reinstate the unauthorized bootlegs,” Bad Bunny’s attorneys wrote. “Unless enjoined by this court, defendants will continue to infringe Ocasio’s rights.”
Such disputes over online content happen all the time, but they’re usually handled without a lawsuit. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, artists like Bad Bunny can file a takedown request to online platforms like YouTube, requiring the site to pull down the allegedly infringing material. That’s typically the end of the story, especially in cases of extensive footage of full songs.
But the DMCA also empowers internet users to object to such requests if they believe that they’ve made a “fair use” of the materials in question – like, say, a news clip of a Bad Bunny concert that incidentally featured some of his music, or a parody video that mocked him by riffing on one of his songs.
In the case of Garrone’s footage, Bad Bunny’s representatives filed a takedown notice for all ten of the clips from the Salt Lake City concert, arguing that they featured unauthorized recordings of huge hits like “Yo Perreo Sola,” “Me Porto Bonito,” “Dakiti” and others. That notice initially succeeded in getting the clips pulled down.
But according to the lawsuit, Garrone then filed a DMCA counter-notice, requesting “reinstatement of the videos as soon as possible.” In a copy of the notice that was included in Bad Bunny’s lawsuit, Garrone argued that he had made “legitimate use of the content” and that the takedown notice “constitutes a serious detriment to my informative and outreach activities.”
“The removed videos also cover the start of the worldwide tour of Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Bad Bunny, with this being his first date out of the 47 planned across North America, constituting in itself a newsworthy event of high public interest and significant informative scope,” Garrone wrote. “In my opinion, the artist also benefits from the dissemination of the content in his own promotion, as his show is carefully captured, conveying the reality of the moment without alterations or post-production in the content.”
Under the DMCA, that move would require YouTube to repost Garrone’s footage unless Bad Bunny filed a copyright infringement lawsuit within ten days. In an email included in the lawsuit, YouTube warned Bad Bunny’s reps that “if we don’t get a response from you, the content at issue may be reinstated.”
“Your response must include evidence that you’ve taken legal action against the uploader to keep the content from being reinstated to YouTube,” the video site told Bad Bunny’s reps. “Usually, evidence would include a lawsuit against the producer which names the YouTube URLs at issue and seeks a court order to restrain the alleged infringement.”
On Friday, Bad Bunny’s lawyers did exactly that. They argued that Garrone’s videos “do not qualify as fair use” that would entitle them to reinstatement, and that they instead violated his rights.
“Each of the unauthorized bootlegs, both individually and collectively, negatively impacts the market for authorized uses of the Bad Bunny works by, among other things, luring YouTube viewers and associated advertising revenue away from authorized videos of the Bad Bunny Works,” the rapper’s attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit also accused Garrone of violating federal trademark laws by using Bad Bunny’s name in promoting the clips, and of violating a federal law specifically aimed at bootlegging.
Reps for Bad Bunny did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Garrone could not immediately be located for comment, because his YouTube page has been disabled.
Sony Music is quickly fighting back against a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former assistant to Columbia Records chief executive Ron Perry over race-conscious hiring policies, saying the allegations are “contradictory and false” and are designed to “harass her former employer.”
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The case, filed last week by Patria Paulino, claims that she was forced to resign after she pushed back on hiring practices that allegedly discriminated against white applicants. She claims she was “explicitly told that she could only hire Black candidates” because Perry wanted bolster the appearance of diversity.
But in a blistering motion on Wednesday – an unusually fast response for any lawsuit – attorneys for Sony and Perry called the accusations “contradictory and false” and asked a federal judge to toss them out of court.
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“She alleges … that defendants both discriminated against her because they preferred white employees but also constructively discharged her because she would not play along with their preference for non-white employees,” the label’s lawyers wrote, adding the italics themselves for emphasis. “In reality, plaintiff worked for Sony … for less than five months, performed poorly, and was a willing participant in the entirely legal hiring practices she now alleges were discriminatory.”
Sony’s response argued that far from being effectively fired, Paulino “voluntarily resigned after receiving unfavorable performance feedback.” The label said she had filed her case simply “to harass her former employer and boss, who sought only to help her succeed in her job.”
Though it sharply criticized the merits of the case, Sony’s filing actually attacked the case on simpler grounds: That the federal court where she filed the case cannot procedurally hear it. The company says there is not the required cross-state jurisdiction for the case to be handled in federal court.
In a statement to Billboard, Paulino’s attorney Erica L. Shnayder stressed that Sony’s motion “involves a procedural issue” and “has no bearing on the factual allegations which are supported by text messages.” Shnayder added: “The case will proceed forward.”
Paulino sued on Friday (March 1), claiming that after she was hired by Sony in late 2022, she was repeatedly told she could not hire white candidates for a vacant assistant role in Perry’s office. She says that Perry had been hit with “multiple racial discrimination complaints by former employees” and that he and the company wanted to “have more color in his office.”
“Although numerous Caucasian candidates were qualified for the position, they were removed from consideration because of their race,” Paulino’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.
The lawsuit came in the wake of a high-profile Supreme Court ruling last year that outlawed the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education, commonly known as “affirmative action.” Though that ruling didn’t directly deal with hiring or with the state laws at issue in Paulino’s case, it has led to overall increased scrutiny of corporate practices aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion. Last week, CBS and Paramount were hit with a similar lawsuit, claiming they had broken the law by using diversity quotas that discriminated against white men.
Despite the directives to aim for diversity, Paulino’s lawsuit claims she “continued to recommend qualified Caucasian applicants” for the role. At one point, when she advanced a particular white candidate, she says that another Sony employee told her in writing: “We can’t hire another white Jewish girl unfortunately.” Her lawyers say Sony conducted “sham” interviews with candidates of all backgrounds, but in reality was determined to only hire a Black candidate.
In March 2023, Paulino says she was effectively forced to resign from her job. A Sony employee allegedly told her to do so because she “was not really working out,” but she says the move was made “in retaliation for plaintiff’s opposition to defendants’ discriminatory hiring practices.”
As noted in Sony’s response, the lawsuit also includes other allegations beyond the hiring policies. In addition to claiming the company discriminated against white job seekers, Paulino (who says she is Hispanic) also claims that the company also discriminated against her on the basis of her race.
A spokesperson for Sony Music declined to comment on the lawsuit’s allegations, citing the pending nature of the case.
Attorneys for Linkin Park are pushing to end a lawsuit that accuses the band of refusing to pay royalties to an ex-bassist who briefly played with the band in the late 1990s, saying such claims have been repudiated for “over two decades.”
In a motion to dismiss the case filed Tuesday (Mar. 5), lawyers for Mike Shinoda and other Linkin Park members say Kyle Christner’s lawsuit is “rife with defects.” Among them, they say, is that the statute of limitations on such claims has “long since passed.”
“Plaintiff claims that defendants … owe him money because he was a member of the band for, at most, eight months, 25 years ago, and was not paid for his ‘contributions’,” writes the band’s lead counsel, prominent music litigator Edwin F. McPherson. “He asserts three claims, each of which fails.”
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Christner sued Linkin Park 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 in the lawsuit.
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.
The dispute was seemingly triggered by an anniversary re-release of the band’s smash hit 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory, which holds the lofty distinction of being the best-selling rock album of the 21st century. Christener claims 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.
But in Tuesday’s response, the band’s lawyers say those allegations are deeply flawed. Among other issues, they say the lawsuit failed to clearly identify what songs Christener was involved with and instead relies on “open-ended” statements like that he’d “likely” been involved in “numerous” songs. “Defendants cannot reasonably be expected to know how to respond to the [lawsuit] without knowing which copyrights are being addressed,” the complaint reads.
For the songs that were properly identified, the band’s attorneys say the lawsuit is clearly barred by the statute of limitations. Copyright ownership disputes must be filed within three years, they say, adding that the band has obviously refused to acknowledge his claims for far longer than that.
“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.
Even for the never-before-released songs, Linkin Park says Christener missed his window: “The Box Set was released in October, 2020; this action was filed on November 8, 2023 — over three years later.”
Christener’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
Manhattan prosecutors made the stunning decision Wednesday (March 6) to drop a criminal case against three men accused of trying to sell stolen notes linked to the Eagles’ 1976 album Hotel California, with a judge saying Don Henley had “manipulated” prosecutors.
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At a hearing Wednesday, a New York judge dismissed the charges after prosecutors alerted him that newly uncovered evidence cast doubt on whether Henley’s notes had been stolen in the first place — the core defense advanced by Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski.
The disclosures came mid-way through a closely-watched criminal trial against the three men, in which Henley and longtime Eagles manger Irving Azoff had already testified. The proceedings had already run more than two weeks and had been expected to keep going until at least next week.
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The sudden reversal was sparked by Henley producing new evidence that had been previously withheld under attorney-client privilege. The new materials touched on whether a journalist hired in the 1970s to write a book about the Eagles, Ed Sanders, had legitimately come into possession of Henley’s notes.
At a hearing in open court on Wednesday, Justice Curtis Farber sharply criticized Henley and Azoff’s conduct: “It is now clear that both witnesses and their lawyers … used the privilege to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging to their position that the lyric sheets were stolen.”
The judge said he was also troubled that prosecutors had been “manipulated” into bringing the charges, and questioned why they had not more thoroughly vetted the accusations and the evidence. But he praised them for dropping the case once new evidence had come to light.
“Albeit late, I commend the prosecution for refusing to allow itself or the courts to be further manipulated for the benefit of anyone’s personal gain,” Farber said. “District Attorney Bragg and the prosecutorial team here, while eating a slice of humble pie, are displaying the highest level of integrity in moving to dismiss the charges. I am impressed.”
In a statement to Billboard following Wednesday’s hearing, Henley’s attorney Dan Petrocelli said: “The attorney-client privilege is a foundational guardrail in our justice system, and rarely, if ever, should you have to forsake it to prosecute or defend a case. As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome. He will pursue all his rights in the civil courts.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to comment.
Horowitz, a rare book dealer, Inciardi, a curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Kosinski, a memoriabila auctioneer, were all charged in 2022 with conspiracy over accusations that they tried to resell and hide the origin of the handwritten notes, penned by Henley during the creation of Hotel California. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. said the trio had “made up stories about the origin of the documents and their right to possess them so they could turn a profit.”
But the three men always maintained that they had done nothing wrong. Their core argument: That the alleged “thief,” Sanders, had legally obtained them in the 1970s in the process of writing a never-released book about the Eagles. If the notes were never stolen, the three argued, how could they be charged with re-selling stolen property?
The trial kicked off last month, with Inciardi’s attorney telling the judge that prosecutors had “distorted the history” to charge innocent men and the DA’s office would be “apologizing at the end of this case.” Henley later testified that the he had not willingly given away the notes, saying they were “something very personal, very private.”
But at Wednesday’s hearing, Justice Curtis said that Henley had recently handed over more than 6,000 new pages of emails and other disclosures that contained new information about how Sanders came to own the notes. Such “jarringly late disclosures” violated Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinski’s constitutional rights, the judge said.
“A review of these newly disclosed materials has demonstrated and highlighted Mr. Henley and Mr. Azoff’s use of the privilege to shield themselves from a thorough and complete cross-examination,” Justice Farber said at the hearing.
“Accordingly, indictment 72426 of ’22 against each defendant, Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski is dismissed,” the judge said.
In a statement to Billboard, Horowitz’s attorney Jonathan Bach said: “We are glad the DA’s office made the right decision and finally dropped this case. It never should have been brought. Mr. Horowitz looks forward to carrying on with his important work.”
Attorneys for the other two defendants did not return requests for comment.
A federal judge is allowing music publishers to move forward with a copyright lawsuit filed against X Corp. over allegations of widespread copyright infringement on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
In a split ruling Tuesday (Mar. 5), Judge Aleta A. Trauger tossed out major parts of the case, like the accusation that X itself directly infringed any music. But she allowed some of the lawsuit’s core allegations — that X essentially enabled illegal behavior by its users by refusing to crack down on them — to move ahead.
In one example, the judge ruled that the music companies could pursue their “particularly striking” allegation that Twitter had been less willing to crack down on users who had paid for “verified” status.
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“If X Corp. truly did allow some users to effectively purchase the right to be able to infringe with less severe consequences, then that was plausibly an instance of promoting X/Twitter’s use to infringe copyright,” the judge wrote.
The case against Twitter was filed in June by dozens of music publishers, who claim that users on the Elon Musk-owned site had infringed over 1,700 songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — a claim that, if proven, could put the social media giant on the hook for $255 million in damages.
The case was organized by the National Music Publishers’ Association, which has long argued that Twitter is the last major social media service that refuses to license music. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat have all allegedly entered into such deals with publishers, providing a library of licensed music for users to legally add to their posts. The lawsuit claimed that Twitter had, instead, effectively allowed its users to supply such music illegally.
The case was filed by Concord, Universal Music Publishing Group, peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and Wixen Music Publishing.
Twitter moved to dismiss the lawsuit in August, arguing that social media sites clearly do not directly infringe copyrights when users upload illegal material. And they argued that digital services also cannot be sued for so-called secondary infringement unless they take active steps to aid the illicit behavior: “In this case, plaintiffs do not allege that X encouraged, induced, or took affirmative steps with the intent to foster the infringement of plaintiffs’ works,” the company’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Trauger partly agreed with Twitter’s arguments. She easily dismissed the allegations of direct infringement, citing recent Supreme Court precedents, and also ruled that the company could not be held liable for “vicarious infringement” — meaning it profited directly from allowing illicit materials on the site. She also ruled that the music companies could not accuse X of so-called contributory infringement simply by offering tools that could sometimes be abused by infringers.
“Many of the supposedly problematic practices that the plaintiffs identify are unremarkable features of X/Twitter generally that X Corp. has simply failed to fence off completely from infringers,” the judge wrote. “The plaintiffs have not identified any basis for concluding that X Corp. was obligated to make its service worse for everyone, just to punish the people who misuse it.”
But Judge Trauger said other alleged conduct, if ultimately proven, could put Twitter on the hook for damages. One such claim, she said, is the allegation that X committed contributory infringement by failing to crack down on “severe serial infringers” who “openly and obviously used the service as a tool for repeatedly posting infringing content.”
“If … there was a class of X/Twitter users who were brazenly using the platform as an infringement tool, and X Corp. made the decision to unreasonably withhold enforcement of its own policies against those users … then X Corp. could plausibly be held contributorily liable,” the judge wrote.
Another claim Judge Trauger allowed to move forward was that X took too long to respond to takedown notices from copyright owners: “If X Corp. engaged in egregious delays in responding to valid takedown notices, or outright ignored some notices that were both facially and actually valid, that could support liability.”
Notably, Tuesday’s ruling did not address the thorny issue of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal law that provides sites like Twitter with immunity — a “safe harbor” — from litigation over material uploaded by their users, so long as they promptly remove it when asked. The music publishers say X clearly failed to do so; the site strongly denies that point.
Though X’s initial motion to dismiss the case did not invoke the DMCA, the company’s lawyers will undoubtedly do so at a later stage of the case now that some of the claims are moving forward. When they do so, the statute will provide X lawyers with another avenue for defeating the allegations that Judge Trauger refused to dismiss on Tuesday.
An attorney for X did not return a request for comment on Tuesday evening.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokeswoman for the NMPA said the group was “pleased” with the ruling: “The spread of rampant music piracy on the platform is obvious and unacceptable, and we look forward to securing just compensation for the songwriters and music publishers whose work is being stolen.”
Sammy Hagar has won a court order barring an allegedly unauthorized Hollywood location of his Cabo Wabo Cantina from continuing to use the chain’s name and branding while their dispute plays out before a judge.
In a preliminary injunction issued Tuesday (Mar. 5), a Los Angeles federal judge sided with Hagar’s company, Red Head Inc., and ruled franchisee Robert Azinian was prohibited from using “Cabo Wabo” trademarks for any purpose, including a new location on Hollywood Boulevard that sparked the rocker’s lawsuit.
When it comes to that particular eatery, Judge George H. Wu wrote that the injunction specifically bars Azinian from “representing to the public, in any way, that the Restaurant is an authorized Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurant.”
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Tuesday’s order came amid an escalating legal dispute between Hagar and his former business partner over Cabo Wabo Cantina — a brand of Mexican-themed eateries started by the Van Halen rocker in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in 1990 and later franchised into locations in Las Vegas and Hollywood.
Azinian’s company, which operated the Hollywood outpost for years, sued Hagar in September, claiming the singer had repeatedly breached their agreements and then unfairly tried to terminate the deal. The lawsuit claimed that the two sides had been at odds for more than a year over Azinian’s concerns that Hagar’s company was failing to support the Hollywood franchise. His lawsuit noted one such grievance was that the rock star himself was “not visiting and entertaining” at that location.
Hagar’s company (Red Head) hit back in January, filing a separate lawsuit in federal court that accused Azinian of infringing the Cabo Wabo trademarks. The case claimed that the partnership had clearly and lawfully been terminated because of Azinian’s own actions, but that Azinian had chosen to “surreptitiously” open a new location in Hollywood anyway.
Last month, Red Head asked for an immediate injunction — warning that Azinian was using Hagar’s branding but that the company had no oversight over the business, including the quality of food: “Every day that the Cabo Wabo Cantina at the new Hollywood location continues to operate under the ‘Cabo Wabo’ brand, it soils the name, reputation, and goodwill that Red Head has developed.”
In Tuesday’s order, Judge Wu was seemingly swayed by those arguments. He said Hagar’s company was likely to eventually win the lawsuit, and that it would face so-called “irreparable harm” if Azinian was able to continue using the Cabo Wabo Cantina branding while the case played out.
“Red Head has shown that it has suffered, and will continue to suffer, irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction — including harm to Red Head’s reputation and loss of goodwill, both of which are not fully remediated by damages,” Judge Wu wrote.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.