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Following four lawsuits filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs alleging sexual assault, the rapper and Bad Boy Records founder is speaking out in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday (Dec. 6). “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH,” he wrote. “For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my […]
Another woman – the fourth in three weeks – is suing Sean “Diddy” Combs over allegations of sexual assault.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York federal court, an unnamed Jane Doe accuser claims she was “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” by Combs, former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre and another man in 2003 when she was 17 years old.
“Ms. Doe has lived with her memories of this fateful night for 20 years, during which time she has suffered extreme emotional distress that has impacted nearly every aspect of her life and personal relationships,” the woman’s lawyers write. “Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.
The new case comes just weeks after Combs was hit with explosive allegations of rape by R&B singer and longtime romantic partner Cassie. That case quickly settled, but Combs was then sued by two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by the hip hop mogul. Combs has strongly denied all of the allegations. Another case was filed against Pierre and Bad Boy, alleging sexual assault.
In the complaint filed in court Wednesday, the accuser’s lawyer Douglas Wigdor (the same attorney who represented Cassie) says the new allegations “are in many ways even more egregious” than the prior cases. “Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.”
In a public statement in response to the new allegations, Combs said: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.”
“For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” Combs wrote. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”
Pierre could not immediately be reached for comment.
The new lawsuit contains graphic allegations of sexual assault.
The alleged victim claims that she met Pierre at a Detroit club in 2003, when she was just a junior in high school. After he “smoked crack cocaine” and “sexually assaulted Ms. Doe by forcing her to give him oral sex,” she says she flew to New York on Combs’ private jet to visit him in his Manhattan recording studio.
While at the studio, the lawsuit claims that Combs, Pierre and an unnamed third man “plied Ms. Doe with drugs and alcohol” until she was so inebriated that she “she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age.”
“While at the studio, Ms. Doe was gang raped by Mr. Combs, the Third Assailant and Mr. Pierre, in that order,” Wigdor writes in the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the unnamed man “raped Ms. Doe as she told him to stop,” and that Pierre “violently forced her to give him oral sex, during which Ms. Doe was choking and struggling to breathe.”
After the attack, the lawsuit says the accuser “could barely stand up” and “had to be helped to walk out of the building and back into a car.” She says she was then flown back to Michigan.
“Defendants preyed on a vulnerable high school teenager,” Wigdor said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.”
The previous cases against Combs – as well as the flurry of other high-profile sexual assault cases filed over the last month – were brought under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for bringing such cases.
Wednesday’s case was not filed under the ASA, because that law expired on Thanksgiving. Instead, it was filed under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, a New York City provision that created a similar “lookback” window that doesn’t expire until 2025.
A federal appeals court has sided with Vans and ruled that Tyga‘s “Wavy Baby” sneakers – a parody of the company’s classic Old Skool – likely violate the shoe company’s trademarks.
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Released last year by a New York art collective called MSCHF, the sneakers were a clear riff on the Vans shoe – a warped, surreal version of the Old Skool. Vans filed a lawsuit calling it “blatant trademark infringement, but the creators claimed that it was legal parody protected by the First Amendment, designed to criticize “sneakerhead” consumerist culture.
In a ruling Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit didn’t buy that argument, upholding an earlier ruling that banned MSCHF from selling any more pairs of Wavy Baby. The court said that “no special First Amendment protections apply” and that the sneaker likely violates Vans’ trademark rights.
“If a parodic use of protected marks and trade dress leaves confusion as to the source of a product, the parody has not ‘succeeded’ for purposes of the [federal trademark law], and the infringement is unlawful,” the court wrote.
Tyga announced the Wavy Baby in April 2022, sparking plenty of buzz but also immediate comparisons to Vans. Footwear News said the shoe “appears to be loosely based on the classic Vans Old Skool” that had been altered with a “wave-like aesthetic.” The site HighSnobiety went with a bolder headline: “MSCHF & Tyga’s Insane Skate Shoes Look Like Liquified Vans.”
Three days before the shoes were set to drop on April 18, Vans filed a lawsuit – claiming MSCHF’s sneakers violated its trademark rights and demanding an immediate restraining order. (The lawsuit did not name Tyga, whose real name is Micheal Stevenson, as a defendant.) Legal trouble was nothing new for MSCHF: the group had previously partnered with Lil Nas X to release a “Satan Shoe” that looked like a pair of Nikes – and had been promptly hit with a similar infringement lawsuit from that sneaker giant.
In the case over Tyga’s sneaker, Vans that consumers would think Wavy Baby was an authorized product artist endorsement deal rather than a parody by a separate company. The company cited previous partnerships with A$AP Rocky, Metallica and Foo Fighters.
“Given Vans’ history of collaborations with musical artists, on information and belief, the collaboration between MSCHF and Michael Stevenson is intended to deceive consumers into believing they arepurchasing a product made by, sponsored by, approved by, or otherwise associated with Vans,” the company’s lawyers wrote at the time.
MSCHF fired back with the First Amendment. It admitted that the Wavy Baby was based on the Old Skool, but said it had a legal right to use the shoe as “the cultural and physical anchor when creating its art.” The company said it wanted to critique “consumerism inherent in sneakerhead culture” and “the phenomenon of sneaker companies collaborating with anyone to garner clout and shoe sales.”
Weeks later, a federal judge rejected those arguments and issued a restraining order banning MSCHF from selling any more Wavy Babys. In issuing his ruling, Judge William F. Kuntz said that he – and, more importantly, consumers – didn’t quite get the joke.
“Whatever the actual artistic merits of the Wavy Baby shoes, the shoes do not meet the requirements for a successful parody,” the judge wrote at the time. “While the manifesto accompanying the shoes may contain protected parodic expression, the Wavy Baby shoes and packaging in and of themselves fail to convey the satirical message.”
On Tuesday, the Second Circuit upheld Judge Kuntz’s ruling and injunction. Among other reasons, the court cited a recent Supreme Court ruling in which the justices ruled that Jack Daniels could sue over dog toys that parodied its whiskey bottles – a decision that lowered First Amendment protections for such parodies.
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A judge issues a ruling in the Hall & Oates lawsuit after the dispute turns public and personal, Young Thug’s RICO trial gets underway in Atlanta with opening statements and witness testimony, Kelly Clarkson wins a California labor law ruling against her ex-husband, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Hall v. Oates Goes Public
The mysterious legal battle among Hall & Oates got a lot clearer last week – with detailed filings from each artist, a hearing in open court, and a judge’s ruling on how the case will proceed.
To catch you up: After a decades-long, highly-lucrative musical partnership, Daryl Hall sued John Oates last month in Nashville court. The case was initially filed under seal, leading to days of speculation about why the beloved duo had become a house divided. Eventually, unsealed documents showed that Hall had sued Oates to block him from selling part of their joint venture to Primary Wave.
Last Wednesday, the case burst fully into the open. First, Hall filed court papers accusing partner John Oates of leaving him “blindsided” by secretly arranging the Primary Wave deal – an act he called the “ultimate partnership betrayal.” Oates responded hours later, saying he was “tremendously disappointed” that Hall had chosen to make “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements about me.”
The filings were packed with new details – not just about the exact contours of the legal dispute, but also about the duo’s broader “divorce,” about Hall’s problems with Primary Wave in particular, and about each man’s personal feelings toward his former partner. Go read our full story here.
A day later, attorneys for the pair headed to court for their first showdown. Hall was repped by Christine Lepera of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, who urged a judge to extend a restraining order preventing Oates from completing the Primary Wave sale until an arbitrator can hear Hall’s objections. Oates was repped by Derek Crownover from Loeb & Loeb LLP, who argued that no such order was necessary.
On Thursday afternoon, Chancellor Russell Perkins agreed to extend the restraining order, blocking Oates from selling to Primary Wave until February or until the arbitrator tackles the case – whichever comes first. Go read our full story explaining why.
The case will now head to private arbitration, for which an arbitrator has already been selected but an initial hearing has not yet been scheduled. Stay tuned…
THE OTHER BIG STORY: YSL RICO Trial Begins
More than 18 months after chart-topping rapper Young Thug was indicted on accusations that he ran a violent Atlanta street gang, he finally headed to trial last week.
In their opening statements, Atlanta prosecutors claimed that Thug was “King Slime,” a powerful boss operating his “Young Slime Life” gang like a “pack” of wolves – even reading a passage from The Jungle Book for jurors. And they defended their controversial use of his music to help prove it.
“We didn’t chase any lyrics to solve any murders,” Adriane Love told jurors. Instead, she said prosecutors in this case “chased the murders and found the lyrics” that pointed to true, specific events.
A day later, Thug’s lawyer responded by telling jurors that his client had been “born into a society filled with despair” and had merely rapped about violent crime because “these are the stories he knew” — and that prosecutors had cherry-picked lyrics that matched the crimes they hoped to pin against him.
“This is the environment he grew up in. These are the people he knew, these are the stories he knew. These are the words he rhymed,” Brian Steel told the jury. “This is art. This is freedom of speech.”
After opening statements concluded, prosecutors began presenting witnesses – a process that is expected to last months.
Other top stories this week…
SINCE U BEEN GONE – Kelly Clarkson won a legal ruling in California that said her ex-husband Brandon Blackstock owes her more than $2.6 million in commissions she paid to him while he serving as her manager. The decision, issued by California’s labor commissioner, said Blackstock had “unlawfully procured” a number of business 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).
‘FICTITIOUS’ CONCERTS? – Rapper Polo G sued a European tour booking firm over canceled plans for a string of concerts, claiming that the company continued to advertise the shows anyway — actions he calls “a shocking and outrageous fraud.”
YOUTUBER SLAPPS BACK – YouTube personality Spencer Cornelia — known for his investigative video series on the music industry — prevailed in a defamation lawsuit filed by wealth coach Derek Moneyberg. The case, which concerned YouTube interviews in which Moneyberg was termed a “Charlatan,” was tossed out under California’s anti-SLAPP law – a statute aimed to quash lawsuits that threaten free speech.
TIKTOK BAN BLOCKED – Montana’s first-in-the-nation law banning the video-sharing app TikTok in the state was blocked by a federal judge who ruled that the statute likely violates the First Amendment. The judge ruled that the law “oversteps state power and infringes on the Constitutional right of users and businesses.”
ARETHA ESTATE BATTLE – A judge overseeing the estate of Aretha Franklin awarded real estate to the late star’s sons, citing a handwritten will from 2014 that was found between couch cushions. The ruling came months after a Detroit-area jury said the document was a valid will under Michigan law, despite scribbles and many hard-to-read passages. Franklin had signed it and put a smiley face in the letter “A.”
In April, Grimes encouraged artists to make music using her voice — as replicated by artificial intelligence-powered technology. Even as she embraced a high-tech future, however, she noted that there were some old-fashioned legal limitations. “I don’t own the rights to the vocals from my old albums,” she wrote on X. “If you make remixes, they may get taken down.”
Artificial intelligence has dominated the hype cycle in 2023. But most signed artists who are enthusiastic about testing out this technology will have to move cautiously, wary of the fact that preexisting contracts may assert some level of control over how they can use their voice. “In general, in a major label deal, they’re the exclusive label for name, likeness and voice under the term,” says one veteran manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Labels might be mad if artists went around them and did a deal themselves. They might go, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have the rights to this.’”
On the flip side, labels probably can’t (or won’t) move unilaterally either. “In our agreements, in a handful of territories, we’ve been getting exclusive name, image, likeness and voice rights in connection with recordings for years,” says one major label source. That said, “as a practical matter, we wouldn’t license an artist’s voice for a voice model or for any project without the artists being on board with it. It would be bad business for us.”
For the moment, both sides are inching forward, trying to figure out how to “interpret new technology with arcane laws,” as Arron Saxe, who manages several artists’ estates, puts it. “It’s an odd time because the government hasn’t stepped in and put down real guidelines around AI,” adds Dan Smith, general manager of the dance label Armada Music.
That means guidelines must be drawn via pre-existing contracts, most of which were not written with AI in mind, and often vary from one artist to the next. Take a recent artist deal sent out by one major label and reviewed by Billboard: Under the terms, the label has the “exclusive right to record Artist Performances” with “performance” broadly defined to include “singing, speaking… or such performance itself, as the context requires.” The word “recording” is similarly roomy: “any recording of sound…by any method and on any substance or material, whether now or hereafter known.”
Someone in this deal probably couldn’t easily go rogue and build a voice-cloning model on newly recorded material without permission. Even to participate in YouTube’s recently announced AI voice generation experiment, some artists needed to get permission in form of a “label waiver,” according to Audrey Benoualid, a partner at Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light. (In an interview about YouTube’s new feature, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind, said only that it has “been complicated” to negotiate deals with various music rights holders.) Even after an artist’s deal ends, if their recordings remain with a label, they would have to be careful to only train voice-cloning tech with material that isn’t owned exclusively by their former record company.
It’s not just artists that are interested in AI opportunities, though. Record labels stand to gain from developing licensing deals with AI companies for their entire catalogs, which could in turn bring greater opportunities for artists who want to participate. At the Made on YouTube event in September, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said it’s the label’s “job” to make sure that artists who lean into AI “benefit.” At the same time, he added, “It’s also our job together to make sure that artists who don’t want to lean in are protected.”
In terms of protections, major label deals typically come with a list of approval rights: Artists will ask that they get the chance to sign off on any sample of their recordings or the use of one of their tracks in a movie trailer. “We believe that any AI function is just another use of the talents’ intellectual property that would take some approval by the creator,” explains Leron Rogers, a partner at Fox Rothschild.
In many states, artists also have protection under the “right of publicity,” which says that people have control over the way others can exploit their individual identities. “Under that umbrella is where things like the right to your voice, your face, your likeness are protected and can’t be mimicked because it’s unfair competition,” says Lulu Pantin, founder of Loop Legal. “But because those laws are not federal, they’re inconsistent, and every state’s laws are slightly different” — not all states specifically call out voices, for example — “[so] there’s concern that that’s not going to provide robust protection given how ubiquitous AI has become already.” (A lack of federal law also limits the government’s ability to push for enforcement abroad.)
To that end, a bipartisan group of senators recently introduced a draft proposal of the NO FAKES act (“Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe”), which would enshrine a federal right for artists, actors and others to take legal action against anyone who creates unauthorized “digital replicas” of their image, voice, or likeness. “Artists would now gain leverage they didn’t have before,” says Mike Pelczynski, who serves on the advisory board of the company voice-swap.ai.
While the entertainment industry tracks NO FAKES’ progress, Smith from Armada believes “we will probably start to see more artist agreements that are addressing the use of your voice.” Sure enough, Benoualid says that in new label deals for her clients, she now asks for approval over any use of an artist’s name, likeness, or voice in connection with AI technology. “Express written approval should be required prior to a company reproducing vocals, recordings, or compositions for the purpose of training AI platforms,” agrees Matthew Gorman, a lawyer at Cox & Palmer.
Pantin has been keeping an eye on the way other creative fields are handling this fast-evolving tech to see if there are lessons that can be imported into music. “One thing that I’ve been trying to do and I’ve had success in some instances with is asking the rights holders — the publishers, the labels — for consent rights from the individual artists or songwriter before their work is used to train generative AI,” she says. “On the book publishing side, the Authors Guild has put forth language they recommended are included in all publishing agreements, and so I’m drawing from that and extending that to songwriting.”
All these discussions are new, and the long-term impact of AI-driven technology on the creative fields remains unclear. Daouda Leonard, who manages Grimes, is adamant that in the music industry’s near future, “the licensing of voice is going to become a valuable asset.” Other are less sure — “nobody really knows how important this will be,” the major label source says.
Perhaps Grimes put it best on X: “We expect a certain amount of chaos.”
An appeals court upheld the disorderly conduct convictions Friday (Dec. 1) of actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and lying about it to Chicago police.
Smollett, who appeared in the TV show Empire, challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois Appellate Court.
Smollett had reported to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack by two men wearing ski masks. The search for the attackers soon turned into an investigation of Smollett himself, leading to his arrest on charges he had orchestrated the whole thing.
Authorities said he paid two men whom he knew from work on Empire, which filmed in Chicago. Prosecutors said Smollett told the men what slurs to shout, and to yell that he was in “MAGA Country,” a reference to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
A jury convicted Smollett in 2021 on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, a charge that can be filed in Illinois when a person lies to police.
He now will have to finish a 150-day stint in jail that was part of his sentence. Smollett spent just six days in jail while his appeal was pending.
Lawyers for Smollett, who is Black and gay, have publicly claimed that he was the target of a racist justice system and people playing politics.
“We are preparing to escalate this matter to the Supreme Court,” Smollett spokeswoman Holly Baird said, referring to Illinois’ highest court and also noting that the opinion at the appellate court wasn’t unanimous.
Appellate Justice Freddrenna Lyle would have thrown out the convictions. She said it was “fundamentally unfair” to appoint a special prosecutor and charge Smollett when he had already performed community service as part of a 2019 deal with Cook County prosecutors to close the case.
“It was common sense that Smollett was bargaining for a complete resolution of the matter, not simply a temporary one,” Lyle said.
Special prosecutor Dan Webb was appointed to look into why the case was dropped. A grand jury subsequently restored charges against Smollett in 2020, and Webb concluded there were “substantial abuses of discretion” in the state’s attorney office during the earlier round.
Smollett was not immune to a fresh round of charges, appellate Justices David Navarro and Mary Ellen Coghlan said in the majority opinion.
“The record does not contain any evidence that (prosecutors) agreed Smollett would not be further prosecuted in exchange for forfeiting his bond and performing community service,” they said.
Kelly Clarkson has won a legal ruling that her ex-husband Brandon Blackstock owes her more than $2.6 million in commissions she paid to him for procuring business deals while he served as her manager.
In a Nov. 21 decision, California’s labor commissioner ruled that Blackstock 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).
By doing so, Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower ruled that Blackstock violated California’s Talent Agencies Act (TAA), which bans anyone other than a licensed talent agent from procuring work for artists.
All told, Blackstock must pay back commissions earned on four deals: $1,983,155.70 for securing Clarkson’s role on The Voice; $208,125 for a deal to promote Norweigan Cruise Lines; $450,000 for an agreement to promote Wayfair; and $93.30 to host the Billboard Music Awards in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Importantly, 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.
“When a manager strategizes with the agent during a negotiation and does not approach the potential employer without the agent’s permission, they are doing exactly what the TAA demands of them,” Garcia-Brower wrote.
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.
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment on this month’s decision.
The Nashville judge overseeing the bitter lawsuit between Hall & Oates sided with Daryl Hall on Thursday (Nov. 3) and ruled that John Oates temporarily cannot sell his share of the band’s joint venture to Primary Wave until a private arbitrator hears the case.
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Hours after attorneys for the two singers squared off in court, Chancellor Russell Perkins agreed to extend an existing restraining order that’s been blocking Oates from selling his share of their joint venture to industry heavyweight Primary Wave.
Without such an order in place, Perkins ruled that Hall might face the “irreparable harm” of the sale being finalized before he is able to prove his claim that the deal violates the terms of their partnership deal.
“If the transfer goes forward before the arbitrator has an opportunity to consider and rule upon plaintiffs’ application for interim injunctive relief in the arbitration, then it could, as a practical matter, render much of the relief Plaintiffs are seeking in the arbitration ineffectual,” Perkins wrote.
The new restraining order bars Oates from completing his sale to Primary Wave until February or until an arbitrator can decide whether to impose a similar restraining order — whichever comes first.
Neither side immediately returned a request for comment on Thursday.
Hall & Oates pumped out six chart-topping singles and four chart-topping albums during the 1970s and 1980s and continued to successfully tour as recently as last year. But in early November, Hall filed a private arbitration case against Oates, accusing him of violating their partnership agreement by attempting to sell his half to Primary Wave, a prominent music company that’s purchased catalogs and other IP linked to many iconic musicians in recent years.
Fearing the deal would close before the arbitration case was heard, Hall then filed the current lawsuit in Tennessee, seeking a court order to block the sale. Perkins quickly did so, blocking the Primary Wave sale from closing until Thursday when he could hear from both sides.
At a live hearing in Davidson County Chancery Court earlier on Thursday, a who’s-who of music attorneys battled over whether to extend the restraining order. Representing Hall was Christine Lepera of the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, who argued that it would be “most efficient” to put the sale on ice until the arbitrator could weigh in. Derek Crownover from the firm Loeb & Loeb LLP, representing Oates, fired back that no additional injunction was needed — that Hall was “not entitled to any relief at all.”
Though the case started out under seal and shrouded in mystery, the legal battle between Hall & Oates has turned increasingly public — and increasingly nasty — over the last week.
On Wednesday, Hall said he had been “blindsided” by the Primary Wave deal and called it the “ultimate partnership betrayal” by his former partner. “Respectfully, he must be stopped from this latest wrongdoing and his malicious conduct reined in once and for all,” Hall wrote of Oates.
Hours later, Oates said in his own declaration that he was “tremendously disappointed” that Hall would make such “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements” about him. “I can only say that Daryl’s accusations that I breached our agreement, went ‘behind’ his back, ‘acted in bad faith,’ and the like, are not true,” Oates wrote.
Following Thursday’s decision, the case will now head to private arbitration, for which an arbitrator has already been selected but an initial hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Attorneys for Hall & Oates members Daryl Hall and John Oates clashed in a Nashville courtroom Thursday during the first showdown in an increasingly bitter lawsuit between the longtime musical partners.
At a live hearing in Davidson County Chancery Court, a who’s-who of music litigators battled over whether Hall was entitled to an order extending an existing restraining order that’s been blocking Oates from selling his share of their joint venture to industry heavyweight Primary Wave.
Representing Hall was Christine Lepera of the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, who argued that it would be “most efficient” to issue a court order putting the sale on ice until a private arbitrator can hear the case and decide whether Oates was legally allowed to sell his stake to Primary Wave.
Firing back for Oates was Derek Crownover from the firm Loeb & Loeb LLP, who said that no additional injunction was needed — that Hall was “not entitled to any relief at all” — and the dispute should simply be allowed to play out in arbitration. Crownover said that at most, the judge should extend the restraining order by only a few weeks.
At the end of the hearing, the judge overseeing the dispute, Chancellor Russell Perkins, said he would issue a ruling later on Thursday on whether he would extend the restraining order.
Hall & Oates pumped out six chart-topping singles and four chart-topping albums during the 1970s and 1980s, and continued to successfully tour as recently as last year. But in early November, Hall filed a private arbitration case against Oates, accusing him of violating their partnership agreement by attempting to sell his half to Primary Wave, a prominent music company that’s purchased catalogs and other IP linked to many iconic musicians in recent years.
Fearing the deal would close before the arbitration case was heard, Hall then filed the current lawsuit in Tennessee, seeking a court order to block the sale. The case was filed under seal, shrouding it in mystery and leading to days of speculation about why the beloved singers were suing each other. The judge overseeing the case quickly issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the Primary Wave sale from closing until Thursday’s hearing could be held.
The live hearing came just hours after Hall and Oates directly attacked each other for the first time in court filings.
In a sworn statement on Wednesday, Hall said he had been “blindsided” by the Primary Wave deal and called it the “ultimate partnership betrayal” by his former partner. “Respectfully, he must be stopped from this latest wrongdoing and his malicious conduct reined in once and for all,” Hall wrote of Oates.
Hours later, Oates said in his own declaration he was “tremendously disappointed” about that Hall would make such “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements” about him. “I can only say that Daryl’s accusations that I breached our agreement, went ‘behind’ his back, ‘acted in bad faith,’ and the like, are not true,” Oates wrote.
The mysterious legal battle among Hall & Oates became clearer Wednesday (Nov. 29) when Daryl Hall filed court papers accusing musical partner John Oates of leaving him “blindsided” by secretly moving to sell his half of their joint venture to Primary Wave – an act he called the “ultimate partnership betrayal.”
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A week after news of the dispute between the yacht rock legends first surfaced, Hall filed an unsealed declaration (obtained by Billboard) that was filled with new revelations – not just about his partner’s “ambush,” but also about the duo’s ongoing “divorce,” about Hall’s problems with Primary Wave in particular, and about his personal feelings toward his former partner.
“Respectfully, he must be stopped from this latest wrongdoing and his malicious conduct reined in once and for all,” Hall wrote of Oates.
Hours later, Oates filed his own statement in response, saying he was “tremendously disappointed” that Hall had chosen to make “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements about me.”
“I have no idea who or what is motivating Daryl to take these steps and make such salacious statements, but I am deeply hurt,” Oates wrote.
After teaming up as a pair of Philadelphia singers in 1972, Hall & Oates hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 a whopping six times, first with “Rich Girl” in 1977 and then with “Kiss On My List,” “Private Eyes,” “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” “Maneater” and “Out of Touch.” The duo have continued to successfully tour for years, including as recently as last year.
But in early November, Hall filed a private arbitration case against Oates, challenging his partner’s alleged plan to sell his half of their joint venture (Whole Oats Enterprises) to Primary Wave, a prominent music company that has acquired many iconic music catalogs in recent years. Fearing that the deal would close before the case was decided, Hall then filed the current lawsuit in Tennessee, seeking a court order to block the sale.
The lawsuit was filed under seal, shrouding it in mystery and leading to days of speculation about why the beloved duo were suing each other. The complaint was then unsealed last week, revealing the basic details about the proposed sale to Primary Wave and Hall’s objections. But Wednesday’s filings painted the clearest picture yet of the bitter dispute between the former partners.
In his declaration, Hall called Oates’ agreement to sell to Primary Wave a “completely clandestine and bad faith move in blatant violation” of their agreement, which he said clearly requires full consent from both partners.
“John Oates and the Co-Trustees engaged in the ultimate partnership betrayal,” Hall wrote. “They surreptitiously sought to sell half of the WOE assets without obtaining my written approval.”
Hall said he first learned of the proposed sale to Primary Wave in late October – news that he said left him “blindsided.” He said it came as the two sides were engaged in mediation on other issues and as he was about to embark on a tour, causing him “tremendous upheaval, harm, and difficulty in my life.”
“I believe that John Oates timed the unauthorized transaction to create the most harm to me,” Hall wrote.
Hall seemed particularly upset about the idea of selling to Primary Wave in particular. He said he had “no intention of becoming partners with Primary Wave” and that Oates could not “thrust a new partner upon me in this outrageous fashion.”
“The potential of being forced into a partnership with Primary Wave without my consent is incredibly upsetting,” Hall wrote. “There is no amount of money that could compensate me for being forced to partner with an entity that I did not agree to partner with, and whose business model does not comport with my views regarding the WOE assets. The harm is unimaginable.”
The biggest problem for Hall, the filing indicated, was the idea of granting Primary Wave control over his name and likeness rights – something he called “highly personal assets.”
“Primary Wave is a company that brands itself as having a strong focus on exploiting not only copyrights but the trademarks and name and likeness rights of the artists from whom they purchase catalogue rights,” Hall wrote. “If Primary Wave becomes my partner they … will likely have a goal to use theWOE assets, and my name and likeness, for branding and exploitations.”
A representative for Primary Wave did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
Hall also revealed that the dispute came amid a broader “divorce” with Oates. His former partner had recently become “adversarial and aggressive” and intended to “burden and harass me.” Eventually, they began discussing a dissolution of their touring company and other joint ventures. But he says that Oates never once discussed selling his share in Whole Oats Enterprises, the joint venture at issue in the case.
“John Oates was very combative and protective with respect to WOE, and consistently conveyed his desire to keep his ownership and that partnership intact and operative—there was never a hint that he would try to ambush me with a sale,” Hall wrote.
The new filing also cleared up exactly what assets are controlled by Whole Oats Enterprises. They include the band’s trademarks, their personal name and likeness rights, their record royalty income, and “certain HO social media and related website assets.” Another entity, Hot Cha Music, LLP, controls the band’s valuable musical composition copyrights – meaning they are not at issue in the case.
In his own filing Wednesday, Oates offered far fewer details than Hall had; he repeatedly said that he was subject to confidentiality agreements that restricted what he could say. But he refuted his partner’s core accusation about a secret deal that violated their partnership contract.
“I can only say that Daryl’s accusations that I breached our agreement, went ‘behind’ his back, ‘acted in bad faith,’ and the like, are not true,” Oates wrote.
A court hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday morning in Nashville.