Legal
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50 Cent has reached a settlement with Rémy Martin to end a lawsuit that claimed his Branson brand of cognac copied the design of the company’s bottles.
E. Rémy Martin & Co. sued in 2021, claiming the liquor brand owned by the rapper (real name Curtis Jackson) had infringed patent and trade dress rights by mimicking Rémy’s XO bottle. 50 Cent’s company, Sire Spirits, called the case “meritless” and accused the bigger rival of trying to “destroy a competitor.”
But in a filing on Monday, the two sides said they had squashed their beef — reaching a “confidential” settlement agreement on June 1 that would fully resolve the litigation. The specific terms of the deal, like whether any money was exchanged or products would be changed, were not made public.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Rémy confirmed to Billboard the agreement would end the case, but declined to offer more details: “Rémy appreciates and respects Mr. Jackson’s entry into the Cognac market and the parties share a common vision for the future of this exceptional and precious spirit. The parties are gratified that this matter could be resolved amicably.”
An attorney for Sire Spirits did not immediately return a request for comment.
50 Cent launched Branson in 2018, selling the cognac in a circular bottle with gem-like facets that was designed by the rapper himself. But in August 2021, Rémy Martin sued on the grounds that the bottle was “nearly indistinguishable” from the “toroidal” shape of its own famous bottle.
“Defendants have willfully and blatantly designed their bottle to unfairly capitalize on the goodwill and reputation that Plaintiff’s bottle has achieved and to unabashedly profit from its bad faith infringement,” the company’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.
Rémy Martin accused the Branson bottle of infringing both design patents and trade dress — a form of trademark that covers the well-known shape or packaging of a product, like a Coca-Cola bottle or blue Tiffany’s box. The lawsuit claimed the bottle was “a blatant attempt” to make consumers think of Rémy Martin.
In October, 50 Cent and Sire fired back, blasting the rival for trying to “eliminate” an upstart competitor and “monopolize the Cognac market.” The company said Rémy Martin’s case was so weak that it should be dismissed at the outset.
“This action is a naked effort to use meritless litigation to financially destroy a competitor,” Sire’s attorneys wrote at the time. “Rémy Martin must be stopped, and the claims against Sire Spirits should not be allowed to survive.”
But in a pair of rulings last year, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein refused to dismiss the case against 50 Cent’s company. “This is not a case in which the claimed and accused designs are so plainly dissimilar that it is implausible that an ordinary observer would confuse them,” the judge wrote at the time.
Those decisions sent the case deeper into litigation and headed toward an eventual trial. But the case has largely been on ice for months as the two sides worked toward the settlement that was reached earlier this month.
Tory Lanez’s sentencing for shooting and wounding hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion was delayed on Tuesday. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Herriford accepted the defense’s request to delay Lanez’s sentencing, which is now scheduled for Aug. 7. Prosecutors are seeking a 13 year prison sentence and Lanez faces deportation to his native Canada. Herriford […]
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 man who unsuccessfully sued Cardi B over an album cover agrees to repay her $350,000 legal bill; Kesha wins a major appellate ruling in her ongoing defamation battle with Dr. Luke; Dua Lipa’s copyright accusers drop their case for good; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Don’t Mess With Cardi B (Or Her Lawyers)
Omar Little, the notorious Baltimore stick-up man who robs drug dealers on HBO’s The Wire, once famously said: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” Well, that same sentiment seems to be increasingly true about Cardi B and her team of lawyers: If you come at her, you better be sure you’re ready for the consequences.
Back in 2017, a guy named Kevin Brophy did exactly that, suing the superstar for millions in damages. His case claimed that Cardi had left him “humiliated” after an image of his enormous back tattoo was inadvertently photoshopped onto the “raunchy” cover of her debut mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1.
But now, six years later, it’s Brophy who’s paying Cardi, not the other way around.
Months after a federal jury rejected his lawsuit, Brophy agreed this week to hand over a whopping $350,000 in legal bills that the superstar spent defeating his case. He also agreed to voluntarily end his efforts to revive the case and waived any chance at a future appeal.
Why would he do all that? Go read our full story here to find out.
For Cardi, turning the tables on Brophy is just the latest financial trouncing of a legal opponent.
Late last month, a gossip blogger named Tasha K who made salacious claims against the rapper was forced to file for bankruptcy after Cardi B won more than $3 million in a defamation lawsuit against her. Shortly after Cardi won that verdict, she tweeted “imma come for everything” along with the acronym BBHMM — “bitch better have my money” — and then spent months chasing the cash, including seizing money from Tasha’s YouTube royalty account.
The takeaway? At least when it comes to legal matters: You come at the queen, you best not miss.
Other top stories this week…
KESHA v. DR. LUKE RULING – New York’s top appeals court handed a key victory to Kesha in her legal battle with Dr. Luke, making it more difficult for him to prove at a looming trial that she defamed the producer when she accused him of rape in 2014. The court said Dr. Luke was a “public figure,” meaning he will need to show that Kesha acted with “actual malice” when she made her statements — a notoriously difficult legal hurdle to clear.
DUA LIPA CASE CLOSED – A Florida reggae band called Artikal Sound System decided to drop its copyright case accusing Dua Lipa of copying her smash hit song “Levitating” from their earlier track. The move — a unilateral capitulation, not a confidential cash settlement — came just days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on whether Artikal would be able to prove that Lipa ever even heard the song she was accused of stealing.
JIMMIE ALLEN SUED AGAIN – The country star was hit with a second sexual abuse lawsuit, claiming he assaulted a woman in a Las Vegas hotel room and filmed the encounter without permission. The case came a month after Allen was accused of sexually harassing and raping a woman on his management team. Allen has strongly denied the allegations and has vowed to “mount a vigorous defense.”
TORY LANEZ SENTENCING – Los Angeles prosecutors formally asked a judge to impose a 13-year prison sentence on Tory Lanez after he was convicted last year of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, telling a judge that Lanez had “waged a campaign to humiliate and re-traumatize the victim” in the wake of the 2020 incident. Sentencing had been set for this week but was rescheduled to Aug 7.
MUSIC AS SEX DISCRIMINATION – The Ninth Circuit issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that said blasting music with “sexually graphic” and “violently misogynistic” lyrics in a workplace could violate federal discrimination laws. Reviving a case against a company that played songs like Too $hort‘s “Blowjob Betty” and Eminem‘s “Stan” at its Nevada warehouse, the court said the music potentially created a “hostile or abusive environment.”
COURT RIPS BAD SETTLEMENT – In another big music ruling, the Ninth Circuit overturned a class action settlement in a royalties lawsuit against the relaunched Napster, sharply criticizing an “unreasonable” deal that secured just $53,000 for songwriters while paying their lawyers a whopping $1.7 million in legal fees. The court said that paying attorneys “more than 30 times the amount that the class received” was likely to “make the average person shake her head in disbelief.”
YOUTUBE CASE DROPPED – Just a day before it had been set to go to trial, a Grammy Award-winning composer dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID. The ruling came weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action — a ruling the composer had said would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit.
ASTROWORLD GAG ORDER STANDS – A Texas appeals court refused to lift a strict gag order on the lawsuit over the deadly 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival. The court was unmoved by arguments from ABC News, which argued that the “sweeping” restrictions clearly violated the First Amendment’s protections on free speech and had created a “news desert” in which almost no reliable information about an important case is being shared with the public.
COVID RELIEF HIJINKS? The owners of a small Palm Springs, Calif., venue filed a lawsuit against Marc Geiger and his company SaveLive, claiming the former WME agent deceived them into accepting an investment in their venue during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a ruse to take over the business without paying a fair price.
New York’s top appeals court on Tuesday (June 13) handed a key victory to Kesha in her legal battle with Dr. Luke, making it more difficult for him to prove at a looming trial that she defamed the producer when she accused him of rape in 2014.
For years, Dr. Luke (full name Lukasz Gottwald) has claimed that the star legally defamed him with the “false and shocking” allegation that he drugged and raped her after a 2005 party, arguing she did so as leverage to secure a more lucrative deal.
But in a ruling on Tuesday, New York’s Court of Appeal ruled that Dr. Luke is legally a “public figure,” meaning he will need to show that Kesha (full name Kesha Rose Sebert) acted with “actual malice” when she made her statements — a notoriously difficult legal hurdle to clear.
“By 2014, when Gottwald initiated this defamation action, he was, by his own account, a celebrity — an acclaimed music producer who had achieved enormous success in a high-profile career,” the appeals court wrote. “He purposefully sought media attention for himself, his businesses, and for the artists he represented, including Sebert, to advance those business interests.”
To show that Kesha acted with “actual malice,” Dr. Luke will now need to prove at trial next month that she either knew her accusation was false or that she acted with a reckless disregard for the truth. That standard, created by the U.S. Supreme Court in a famous 1964 ruling for the New York Times, has made it extremely challenging for powerful people to file libel lawsuits in U.S. courts.
And that wasn’t the only win for Kesha in Tuesday’s decision. The appeals court also ruled that New York’s newly-enacted “anti-SLAPP” law applies to Dr. Luke’s case — meaning that if she beats the accusations, she can demand that he repay some of her legal bills.
“Sebert may assert a counterclaim under [the anti-SLAPP law] and, if successful, recover costs, attorney’s fees, and damages based on Gottwald’s continuation of this action following the [the statute’s] effective date,” the court wrote.
Though largely a victory for Kesha, part of the ruling did go in favor of Dr. Luke. The court largely refused to endorse Kesha’s arguments that many of the allegedly defamatory statements were shielded by so-called privileges — such as statements made ahead of litigation. For 20 of 25 such statements, the court ruled that a jury might side with Dr. Luke and find the statements fair game.
In a statement to Billboard, Dr. Luke’s lawyer Christine Lepera focused on those aspects of the ruling and said she and her team were still “fully confident that Mr. Gottwald will prevail at trial on his defamation claims.”
“We are pleased that the Court of Appeals agreed with Dr. Luke that the vast majority of Ms. Sebert’s statements are properly the subject of his defamation claim,” Lepera said. “Therefore, at trial, Ms. Sebert will be required to defend her harmful and long-standing press campaign against Mr. Gottwald.”
An attorney for Kesha did not immediately return a request for comment.
After nearly eight years of litigation, a trial in Dr. Luke’s lawsuit is scheduled to finally start on July 19. The trial had been repeatedly pushed back while both sides awaited Tuesday’s ruling by the Court of Appeals.
Read the entire ruling here:
A man who unsuccessfully sued Cardi B after his giant back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped into one of her album covers has agreed to repay a whopping $350,000 in legal bills that the superstar spent defeating his lawsuit.
Months after a jury rejected Kevin Brophy’s case against Cardi, his lawyers told a federal judge Monday (June 12) that he would not only reimburse the money that the rapper had dropped on her attorneys but also voluntarily end his efforts to revive the case and waive any chance at a future appeal.
Why would he do all that? Possibly because Cardi’s lawyers were gearing up to formally demand that he repay her attorneys’ fees — a prize to which she was potentially eligible after beating his accusations in court. Under that process, Cardi and her pricey team of lawyers could have won even more than $350,000.
“The parties now have reached an agreement avoiding the necessity of defendants’ motion for attorney’s fees and application to tax costs,” the two sides wrote in Monday’s filing, hinting at the looming threat of such a fee motion from Cardi’s team.
Attorneys for both sides declined to comment on the agreement when reached by Billboard on Monday.
Brophy sued Cardi in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of Cardi’s Gangsta Bitch. The image featured the then-rising star taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image Search, found one that fit (Brophy’s) and superimposed it onto the model’s body.
Brophy’s lawsuit claimed Cardi and others involved in the cover had used his likeness without his consent and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.” Cardi’s lawyers called the allegations “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown,” arguing that nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back.
During a four-day trial in October, Cardi took the stand to defend herself. When examined by Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, things repeatedly got heated between the two — so much so that at one point the judge cleared the jury, told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line” and threatened to declare a mistrial.
At the end of the trial, the jury agreed with the superstar’s defenses, clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims. Brophy later asked the judge to throw out the verdict for a lack of evidence, but the judge denied that motion in December. Brophy then filed a motion in January seeking a new trial, arguing that the star “engaged in theatrics” on the witness stand and deprived him of a fair trial.
Under Monday’s agreement, that motion will be withdrawn, and Brophy will “waive and irrevocably relinquish” any chance to challenge the verdict on appeal. In return, Cardi’s attorneys will similarly waive their right to file a motion formally seeking an award of attorneys’ fees.
A Grammy Award-winning composer has dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID, just a day before it had been set to go to trial — and weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action.
Maria Schneider spent years litigating her lawsuit, which claimed that YouTube had become a “hotbed of piracy” because it provided effective content tools only to “powerful copyright owners” like record labels and not to “ordinary owners” like artists and songwriters.
But on Sunday (June 11), with a jury trial scheduled to kick off on Monday morning), lawyers for both sides told a federal judge that they had agreed to end the case without a decision: “In light of the stipulation of dismissal of all claims with prejudice, the jury trial set for June 12, 2023, is vacated,” Judge James Donato wrote. “The case is closed.”
The sudden end to the case came just weeks after Judge Donato issued a crucial ruling that dramatically reduced the scope of the lawsuit: That Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies.
Schneider quickly moved to appeal that ruling and postpone the trial, arguing that it would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit. But a federal appeals court denied that motion on Friday.
Faced with a jury trial they had warned would be “enormously wasteful,” Schneider’s lawyers dropped their case. Neither side immediately returned requests for more information about how the resolution of the litigation was reached, including specific details about any kind of settlement agreement.
Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.
For its part, YouTube says it’s done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”
The case was filed as a class action, aiming to let potentially tens of thousands of aggrieved copyright owners team up to fight what Schneider’s lawsuit called “institutionalized misbehavior.” An expert retained by her legal team said the class could include between 10,000 and 20,000 rights holders.
But in a May 22 ruling, Judge Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns — and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rights holders would have widely different cases against YouTube.
Following that ruling, Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial. But at a hearing days after the decision, Donato said he would stick to the schedule: “I’m not going to do that. You got a trial set on June 12th. This is a 2020 case; OK. It’s showtime.”
In a June 5 emergency petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Schneider’s lawyers demanded the appeals court put the case on ice while she filed an appeal on the class certification issue. They argued that a “brief” pause would prevent the judge’s “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling from derailing a case with important implications.
“The named plaintiffs here joined the case to litigate class claims, and to vindicate their view that YouTube tramples on the rights of independent artists and smaller copyright holders overall, not just those of the individual plaintiffs,” her lawyers told the appeals court.
But in a ruling published on Friday evening, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments: “The court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal,” the court wrote. “Petitioners’ emergency motion for a stay is denied as moot.”
Schneider and her lawyers still could have proceeded to trial against YouTube, litigating the case simply on behalf of her and another plaintiff. But they had strongly indicated in court filings that they did not want to proceed to the trial without class-action status.
A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Friday to helping two other men charged with fatally shooting rapper Young Dolph in a daytime ambush at a Memphis bakery.
Jermarcus Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact. Judge Lee Coffee approved a plea deal with prosecutors, allowing him to avoid trial. He could testify at a future trial in the November 2021 killing of Young Dolph, whose real name was Adolph Thornton Jr.
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Johnson is the first of four defendants to plead guilty or be convicted in the Young Dolph shooting, which rattled Memphis and shook the entertainment world. The 36-year-old rapper, label owner and producer was buying cookies near his boyhood home in Memphis when he was gunned down by two men who drove up to the bakery in a stolen Mercedes Benz, authorities said.
Johnson acknowledged helping the two shooting suspects communicate by cellphone after the killing while they were on the run from authorities and helping one of them communicate with his probation officer after the killing.
During questioning by prosecutor Paul Hagerman, Johnson acknowledged taking possession of car a from shooting suspect Justin Johnson, his half brother. The car was not the one tied to the killing, Hagerman said. Jermarcus Johnson also identified a photo in which Justin Johnson was wearing the same clothing as one of the two shooters accused of gunning down Young Dolph the day the rapper was killed.
Hagerman said Jermarcus Johnson had no role in the actual killing of Young Dolph, but he was one of “multiple players” doing different things in connection with it.
Hagerman said after the hearing that dealing with a case with several defendants is “a little bit like chess.”
“You’ve got to set up your pieces,” he said.
Jermarcus Johnson was initially charged with the more serious offence of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, an indictment said. Jermarcus Johnson helped Justin Johnson communicate with the other suspect, Cornelius Smith, the indictment said.
Jermarcus Johnson’s lawyer, Josh Corman, told reporters his client was an unwilling participant who was dragged into the aftermath of the killing.
“Sometimes it’s one of those lessons of, you have to be careful who you know and who you associate with,” Corman said. “In this case, it was a half brother of his who showed up to his apartment one day and had a phone and a car.”
Justin Johnson and Smith have pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder. The fourth man accused in the indictment, Hernandez Govan, also has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. Govan is accused of arranging the killing.
A motive for the killing has not been disclosed.
Young Dolph was known in Memphis for his charitable works and his success as an independent musical artist and businessman. When he was killed, Young Dolph was in the city to visit a sick relative and hand out Thanksgiving turkeys at a church.
After his death, Memphis named a street after him and the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA honored him during a game. Murals of the rapper have been painted around the city and a pop-up museum featuring him was opened earlier this year.
The bakery, Makeda’s Homemade Cookies, became an impromptu memorial site for the slain rapper. It was closed for months after the shooting, but has since reopened.
Justin Johnson and Smith are being held in jail. Govan was given a $90,000 bond based on safety and health issues and he is on house arrest.
Johnson faces six to 12 years in prison at sentencing at a later date.
A federal appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says blasting music with “sexually graphic” and “violently misogynistic” lyrics in a workplace could violate federal discrimination laws.
Reviving a lawsuit against an apparel company that played songs like Too $hort‘s “Blowjob Betty” and Eminem‘s “Stan” at a Nevada warehouse, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday (June 9) that the music had potentially created a “hostile or abusive environment” for female employees.
“Blasted from commercial-strength speakers placed throughout the warehouse, the music overpowered operational background noise and was nearly impossible to escape,” the appeals court wrote. “In turn, the music allegedly served as a catalyst for abusive conduct by male employees, who frequently pantomimed sexually graphic gestures, yelled obscenities, made sexually explicit remarks, and openly shared pornographic videos.”
The employer, S&S Activewear, argued the music didn’t constitute illegal bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, partly because it had been equally offensive to both men and women. And last year, a federal trial judge agreed, calling the case “fatally flawed” and dismissing it on those grounds.
But in Wednesday’s decision, the Ninth Circuit called that an “absurd interpretation” of the statute — and one that would create a “gaping hole” in discrimination law for any company that chose to be an “equal opportunity harasser.”
The appeals court said it was the first time it had ever ruled on the issue of “music-as-harassment” under the Civil Rights Act. But the judges said that sexist songs should be treated no differently than other situations where a workplace is “polluted with insult and intimidation.”
“[Female employees were] forced to tolerate the music and the toxic environment as a condition of continued employment,” the court wrote. “Whether sung, shouted, or whispered, blasted over speakers or relayed face-to-face, sexist epithets can offend and may transform a workplace into a hostile environment that violates Title VII.”
Importantly, Wednesday’s ruling does not say that S&S definitely violated the law; rather, it says the allegations against the company could have merit if they are eventually proven, and thus that the case should not have been dismissed so quickly. The case will now return to a lower court for more litigation and an eventual trial.
An attorney for S&S did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision.
The case was filed in 2020 by Stephanie Sharp and seven other women who worked at S&S’s Nevada warehouse. As examples of the music they were allegedly forced to listen to, they cited “Blowjob Betty,” including its lyrics about a woman “who dies because of swallowing semen in her windpipe.” They also cited “Stan” and its lyrics about “placing a pregnant woman in the trunk of a vehicle and then driving the vehicle into a river … for the purpose of drowning her.”
Though the songs at issue in the case were mostly hip-hop, Wednesday’s ruling reviving that lawsuit was careful to stress that it was not targeting rap music specifically.
“It is beyond our purview to pass judgment on the appropriateness of music in the workplace writ large,” the court wrote. “Nor is it our objective to ascribe misogyny to any particular musical genre.”
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, lead plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Mausert said he and his clients were “very pleased” with a ruling that used “common sense” to reach the right result: “This opinion will prevent a lot of sexual harassment at a multitude of workplaces,” Mausert said. “It is well written and is pretty much a tour de force of Ninth Circuit law.”
Read the Ninth Circuit’s entire ruling here:
A Florida reggae band has decided to drop a copyright case accusing Dua Lipa of copying her smash hit song “Levitating” from their earlier track, two days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on the lawsuit’s allegations.
The band, called Artikal Sound System, sued the star last year over accusations that her 2020 song — which spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — borrowed its core hook from their lesser-known 2017 tune, “Live Your Life.”
But in a filing on Wednesday (June 7), attorneys for both Artikal Sound System and Lipa filed a joint motion, asking the judge to permanently dismiss the case. There was no indication that Lipa had agreed to pay any money or change the credits to her song.
The filing came just two days after U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes ruled strongly for Lipa, saying that there was no sign that anyone involved in creating “Levitating” had had “access” to the earlier song — a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
That ruling technically dismissed the case against Lipa, but Judge Sykes gave Artikal Sound System another chance to refile an updated version of the case within two weeks. Instead, the band appears to have decided not to pursue further litigation against Lipa and the other “Levitating” co-writers.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday evening, Lipa’s attorney Christine Lepera confirmed that the band had chosen to walk away from the litigation unilaterally and that no settlement had been reached.
“Following the court’s decision dismissing their complaint, the plaintiffs voluntarily chose to discontinue the case with prejudice, without any consideration whatsoever from the defendants, who were prepared to vigorously defend any continuation of the case,” said Lepera, an attorney at the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.
An attorney for the band did not immediately return a request for comment.
Artikal Sound System’s decision to drop the lawsuit brings an end to one of two high-profile cases filed against Lipa last year over “Levitating,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 before securing the honor of being the longest-running top 10 song ever by a female artist on the chart.
The other case, filed by songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, claims that Lipa lifted the melody to her track from their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.” That case is still pending but faces similar counter-arguments from Lipa’s lawyers about a lack of “access.”
Artikal Sound System is a reggae band based out of South Florida, founded in 2012 as a duo before later adding additional musicians and vocalist Logan Rex. The band released “Live Your Life” on its 2017 EP Smoke and Mirrors.
In their March lawsuit, the band said the songs sounded so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” The lawsuit also named Dua Lipa’s label, Warner Records, as well as others who helped create the hit track.
In November, Lipa’s lawyers argued that Artikal Sound System had no proof that Lipa or the other writers ever heard “Live Your Life” before they wrote “Levitating.” They called the allegations “speculative,” “vague” and supported by little real evidence.
Artikal Sound System offered a complex theory for how such “access” might have happened, stating that one of Lipa’s co-writers had previously worked with a woman who was allegedly taught guitar by the brother-in-law of one band member.
But in her ruling on Monday Judge Sykes flatly rejected that argument: “These attenuated links, which bear little connection to either of the two musical compositions at issue here, also do not suggest a reasonable likelihood that defendants actually encountered plaintiffs’ song.”
At 11:30 p.m. on Friday, June 2, attorney Brice Timmons was at an event in Memphis aptly named Big Gay Dance Party. He was de-stressing and commiserating with his co-counsel about the lack of action from a federal judge on their lawsuit against the state of Tennessee for its “drag ban.” They had hoped for a ruling before the weekend, but it hadn’t arrived yet — so, they resolved instead to celebrate the start of Pride Month.
Then, they checked their phones; the ruling had just dropped. “It was a ruling that that called the state on the carpet for every every aspect of the law’s unconstitutionality,” he tells Billboard over the phone. “The DJ just stopped the music, the announcer came up onto the stage and just yelled, ‘We won!’ Yeah, that was a high point of my career.”
Throughout his 70-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker found in favor of Timmons’ clients Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based LGBTQ theater company and drag troupe. The judge determined the Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (or “AEA”) was an “unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech,” and permanently prevented District Attorney General Steven Mulroy of Shelby County, Tenn. — the defendant in the case — from enforcing the law.
While Timmons says that he is “very proud to have done this work,” he’s not all that surprised by the outcome. “This has not been very challenging legal analysis — it’s just a new generation of bigots trying the same old tricks,” he says.
Those “tricks” Timmons refers to had the state appealing to the interest of protecting children from explicit sexual content, claiming that the law was intended to be narrowly applied to only certain kinds of drag performances in public spaces.
But LGBTQ advocates and community members like Friends of George’s pointed out that the law’s intentional vagueness left the door open for the state to apply the law in a wide variety of ways — a fact that Judge Parker agreed with, saying in his ruling the AEA was “both unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad” in its scope.
When looking at the defense mounted by Tennessee, Timmons recognizes the tactics used. “Going into court and lying is a long standing legal strategy for governments that want to abuse their power,” he says. “It’s not that their legal theory is simply incorrect; it’s false. So they had to walk into court, to lie about why the law was passed, to lie about what the law says, and to lie about what the effects of the law will be.”
Timmons’ case, meanwhile, revolved largely around a number of First Amendment legal precedents set by the Supreme Court. In one case — Ashcroft v. ACLU — the Court upheld that a censorship law passed by Congress aimed at preventing children from accessing pornographic material on the internet was a violation of the First Amendment.
“Those laws were much more carefully drafted, and they did not have an a fundamentally inappropriate purpose. They weren’t targeting certain types of performers or certain types of websites,” he explains. “And still the Supreme Court said, ‘The state doesn’t get to insert itself into communicative decision making, unless it does so in just the most carefully, narrowly crafted way.’”
Since the ruling was officially released, the state has not officially announced an appeal — it has 30 days from the date of the ruling to file and appeal on the decision. But Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told The New York Times in a statement not only that the state planned to appeal the decision, but that he feels the law “remains in effect outside of Shelby County.”
Timmons doesn’t mince his words when it comes to Skrmetti’s claim: “I think it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard a lawyer say.” He points out that while Judge Parker offered a permanent enjoinment to the district attorney general of Shelby County and not the entirety of the state, he still ruled that the law itself was unconstitutional.
“That means there is no constitutional application for that law,” Timmons says. “If Jonathan Skrmetti wants to tell law enforcement officers in the state of Tennessee to go in and force an unconstitutional law, then I guess I’ll just have a cottage industry suing those law enforcement officers.”
As for other states where restrictions or bans on public drag performances have been passed, Timmons says that the Tennessee ruling is going to play a major factor. He knows this from experience — when he answers his phone for this interview, he’s just leaving court in Florida, where he argued as lead council against the state’s restrictive drag law on behalf of Hamburger Mary’s.
“[The Tennessee ruling] was the first thing that the judge here in Florida asked about during the hearing today,” he says. “It seems like judge Parker’s ruling is going to be, you know, a guide for how other courts will address this.”
Timmons says he’s already working with lawyers in Montana and Texas preparing to mount their own suits against their states’ respective drag bans, and that he and his team will “do everything we can to help them.” As for the impending threat of an appeal from Tennessee? “We’ve got a good team of lawyers, and nothing succeeds like success.”