Legal
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Las Vegas police have dropped their criminal investigation into last weekend’s incident in which Cardi B threw her microphone at a fan who had splashed her with a drink. Though a police report was filed by the alleged victim Sunday (July 30), the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to Billboard on Thursday (Aug. 3) […]
Within hours of Lizzo breaking her silence on the lawsuit filed by three of her ex-dancers — who allege that the star sexually harassed her employees and facilitated a hostile work environment — plaintiffs Crystal Williams, Arianna Davis and Noelle Rodriguez have already responded.
Sitting down for a live interview with CNN This Morning, the three women agreed that they were disappointed by the statement Lizzo had posted hours earlier, two days after the suit was first filed. In her written statement, the Grammy winner insisted that their claims were “false allegations” and “sensationalized stories,” adding, “I am not the villain that people and the media have portrayed me to be these last few days.”
“I want to say that reading it just kind of furthered … my disappointment in regards to the situation, just because the facts are the facts,” Williams told host Phil Mattingly. “What we experienced and what we witnessed is absolutely what happened. There’s nothing sensationalized about it. So, all that I can hope is that people focus more so on the facts rather than the court of public opinion.”
“Looking at the response from Lizzo was so disheartening because she was there,” Davis agreed. “She was there. And to fix your hand to write on a piece of paper that you don’t believe, that you discredit everything we’re saying is incredibly frustrating.”
Davis went on to double down on some of the claims she made in the lawsuit, including one instance where she felt Lizzo body-shamed her, and another in which she was allegedly pressured to engage with nude performers at a sex show in Amsterdam. Davis also claimed in the lawsuit that Lizzo had the dancers re-audition for their spots as backup dancers on tour, an allegedly “excruciating” process that led to Davis wetting herself on stage out of fear of what might happen if she left to use the bathroom.
Lizzo’s statement did not address the accusations in the lawsuit individually, but she noted that the allegations were “coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional.” The star — who is known for being outspoken about body positivity — added in her statement: “With passion comes hard work and high standards. Sometimes I have to make hard decisions but it’s never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or like they aren’t valued as an important part of the team.”
The plaintiffs’ attorney Ron Zambrano — who was also on CNN This Morning — added that he “one hundred percent” expects more people to come forward soon with more stories of harassment or toxic work conditions, which he believes will back up Davis, Rodriguez and Williams’ claims. “People have already come on social media to support our clients,” the lawyer said. “People have already reached out to my office through social media. I believe more people will come forward.”
Watch the interview below:
“It’s this thing in the dance industry that you have to shut up and take whatever you get and just be grateful for whatever crumbs you get as a dancer.”Lizzo has denied the “false accusations” made in a lawsuit brought by three of her former dancers. We get their reaction: pic.twitter.com/z7P3LO9Yb4— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) August 3, 2023
Lizzo has issued her first response to a bombshell lawsuit from three tour dancers who claim that they were subjected to sexual harassment and weight-shaming, calling them “false allegations” and “sensationalized stories.”
In a statement posted Thursday morning to her Twitter account, the star said the allegations in the lawsuit – that she and her company created a hostile work environment that also included religious and racial discrimination – were as “unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed.”
“I am not the villain that people and the media have portrayed me to be these last few days,” Lizzo wrote. “I am very open with my sexuality and expressing myself but I cannot accept or allow people to use that openness to make me out to be something I am not.”
The star paid particular attention to a claim in the lawsuit that she had “called attention” to a dancer’s weight gain – an especially loaded allegation against an artist who has made body positivity a central aspect of her personal brand.
“There is nothing I take more seriously than the respect we deserve as women in the world,” Lizzo wrote. “I know what it feels like to be body shamed on a daily basis and would absolutely never criticize or terminate an employee because of their weight.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles by dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez, accuses Lizzo (real name Melissa Jefferson) and her Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. of a wide range of legal wrongdoing and included dozens of pages of detailed factual allegations.
In one particularly vivid allegation, the lawsuit claims that Lizzo pushed the dancers to attend a sex show in Amsterdam’s famed Red Light District and then pressured them to engage with the performers, including “eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.” After Lizzo herself led a chant “goading” Davis to touch one performer’s breasts, the lawsuit says, Davis eventually did so.
The dancers also detailed alleged outbursts by Lizzo, including an “excruciating re-audition” in April after she accused the dancers of “drinking alcohol before shows”; one dancer claims the ordeal continued for so long that she wet herself because she feared she would be fired if she left the stage. The case also claims Lizzo repeatedly told dancers “none of their jobs were safe” and raised “thinly veiled concerns” about a dancer’s weight gain.
In her statement on Thursday, Lizzo did not address the lawsuit’s individual accusations, but said they were “sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional.” And she broadly defended herself against what she called an attack on her “ethic, morals and respectfulness.”
“As an artist I have always been very passionate about what I do. I take my music and my performances seriously because at the end of the day I only want to put out the best art that represents me and my fans,” Lizzo said. “With passion comes hard work and high standards. Sometimes I have to make hard decisions but it’s never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or like they aren’t valued as an important part of the team.”
Read Lizzo’s entire statement here.
One of Jimmie Allen‘s sexual assault accusers has a message for the embattled country star: You can’t sue me for handing over your cell phone – which she calls “evidence of a crime” – to the police.
The new court filing came from a woman who claims that Allen assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room and secretly recorded it. In her June lawsuit, she said she took the phone as evidence and handed it over to police. But in a countersuit last month, Allen claimed she essentially stole his property by doing so.
On Tuesday, Allen’s accuser (known as Jane Doe 2) asked a federal judge to dismiss that accusation – calling his claims about theft “nothing more than harassment of a victim and abuse of the judicial process.”
“Now, in addition to being a victim of sexual abuse and illegal video voyeurism, Plaintiff is faced with Defendant’s attempt to harass and intimidate her,” Doe 2’s lawyers wrote. “Allowing a defendant to sue a crime victim for reporting a crime and turning over evidence of that crime to the police is directly contrary to public policy.”
A representative for Allen did not immediately return a request for comment.
Allen, a once-rising country music star, has faced a swift industry backlash after being hit with two separate sexual assault lawsuits. The first case, filed on May 11, claims he “manipulated and used his power” to repeatedly harass and assault an unnamed “Jane Doe” on his management team.
The second case, filed on June 9 by Doe 2, claims that while she “willingly joined Allen in the bedroom” of a Las Vegas hotel, he later ejaculated inside her against her explicit wishes – and filmed the entire sexual encounter without her knowledge. Doe 2 says she took the phone with her when she left and, after Allen refused to share the password so she could delete the recordings, that she passed it along to the Las Vegas Police Department.
Last month, Allen responded to both lawsuits by denying all the allegations against him. In the case of Doe 2, he admitted to having “unprotected sex” with her, but said he “did not ejaculate during the encounter.” He also admitted to recording the incident but, crucially, said he had secured her explicit permission to do so.
He also countersued with allegations of his own, accusing Doe 2 of “conversion” — a civil tort similar to theft that involves someone taking property that doesn’t belong to them: “By taking his camera phone without permission, Jane Doe 2 wrongfully exerted a distinct act of dominion over Allen’s personal property,” his lawyers wrote at the time.
In her response on Tuesday, Doe 2’s lawyer say that taking the phone was not a form of civil wrongdoing, but merely “her exercise of rights as a victim of crime.” She cited previous cases that excused such seizures, like one in which a babysitter was sued for taking photos of child abuse.
“Plaintiff turned evidence of alleged illegal conduct, i.e., the recording of Plaintiff in a state of undress and of sexual acts without her consent, over to the police to investigate,” Doe 2’s lawyers wrote. “The law does not condemn victims for doing so.”
Filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison is speaking out after three tour dancers filed a lawsuit against Lizzo Tuesday (Aug. 1) that alleged the star subjected them to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.
Allison claims in a message shared on her Instagram Stories and Twitter account that she had been attached to the singer’s documentary Love, Lizzo in 2019, but quickly left the project. “I usually do not comment on anything pop culture related,” she wrote over an image of herself at work. “But, In 2019, I traveled a bit with Lizzo to be the director of her documentary. I walked away after about 2 weeks. I was treated with such disrespect by her.”
She continued, “I witnessed how arrogant, self-centered, and unkind she is. I was not protected and was thrown into a sh-tty situation with little support.” Allison then noted that her gut told her to leave the project, and is “grateful” that she did, adding that she “felt gaslit and was deeply hurt.”
“Reading these reports made me realize how dangerous of a situation it was,” the filmmaker concluded before sending her support to the dancers. “This kind of abuse of power happens far too often.”
Billboard has reached out to Lizzo’s reps for comment regarding Allison’s claims.
On Twitter, the filmmaker — who is known for the Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary A Love Song for Latasha, about the 1992 shooting death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in Los Angeles — shared why she wanted to speak out. “Validating other Black women’s experiences is deeply important to me,” she explained.
The Love, Lizzo documentary for HBO Max was announced in May 2022, and released in November 2022. Doug Pray, who previously produced HBO documentary The Defiant Ones, about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s partnership, directed the project.
In the complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles, dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez allege that Lizzo pressured them to go to an Amsterdam sex show and engage with the performers, and that she “called attention” to one dancer’s weight gain. The “Special” singer has been an outspoken proponent of body positivity, and often slammed internet trolls for body-shaming women.
The pop star also launched her own reality show, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, for Amazon’s Prime Video in March 2022. The program followed her search for backup dancers to join her on tour. “Y’all know how hard it’s been finding dancers that look like me,” she wrote on Instagram when the trailer dropped in February 2022. “But if I gotta get a TV show to get the world to see the value in us big grrrls B—H IMMA DO IT.”
Representatives for Lizzo have not yet returned Billboard‘s request for comment about the lawsuit.
Dua Lipa and Warner Music Group are facing another copyright lawsuit over “Levitating,” this time from a music producer who says he never granted the star permission to use his “talk box” recording in remixed versions of the smash hit song.
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In a lawsuit filed Monday (July 31) in federal court, Bosko Kante says he created a so-called talk box track for use in Lipa’s original version of the song, but that the creators of “Levitating” had no right to use it in subsequent remixes, like the even-more-popular version featuring DaBaby.
“Plaintiff made numerous attempts to resolve this matter short of litigation, but such efforts were unsuccessful, due to Defendants’ unwillingness to cooperate or accept responsibility for this blatant infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrights,” Kante’s lawyers wrote.
Kante calls himself one of the world’s top artists on the talk box — a decades-old device that allows musicians to apply speech sounds onto the sounds of an instrument. After contributing talk box performances for Kanye West and Big Boi, Kante launched a company called ElectroSpit in 2014 to sell a proprietary digital version of the device.
In this week’s lawsuit, Kante says that he was approached in 2014 by Stephen Kozmeniuk, one of producers of “Levitating,” about creating a talk box performance that would be incorporated into Lipa’s song. He says he later did so, and eventually reached an oral agreement that the track could be used in “Levitating.”
But Kante says that the deal expressly didn’t cover any further remixes beyond the original release — meaning Lipa and Warner Music didn’t have the right to use it on the DaBaby remix, nor on another version by The Blessed Madonna featuring Madonna and Missy Elliott.
“All three remixes sampled and incorporated a greater amount of plaintiff’s work than that used in the original version,” Kante’s lawyers wrote. “Defendants did not seek or receive any authorization or permission to use the composition or sound recording of plaintiff’s work from plaintiff.”
A rep for Dua Lipa did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
The new case is the third copyright lawsuit filed against Lipa over “Levitating,” which spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after debuting in 2020.
In March 2022, a Florida reggae band called Artikal Sound System claimed Lipa stole the song’s core hook from their lesser-known 2017 tune “Live Your Life.” Days later, songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer accused Lipa of borrowing the melody to her track from their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
But in June, Artikal Sound System dropped their case just days after a federal judge ruled 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.
The case filed by Brown and Linzer is still alive but is facing a similar pending argument from Lipa’s lawyers, who say the pop star “never heard” the two songs she allegedly copied.
A concertgoer has filed a police report after Cardi B was captured on video at a Las Vegas event throwing her microphone at a fan who splashed her with a drink. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to Billboard on Monday (July 31) that an individual filed a police report Sunday alleging battery, claiming […]
More than nine years after members of the 1960s rock band The Turtles filed a series of groundbreaking lawsuits over the legal protections for so-called pre-1972 sound recordings, a federal judge has now dismissed their final case — a lawsuit against Pandora that he called the band’s “last case standing.”
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In a decision issued Wednesday, Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled that the Sirius XM-owned Pandora had not violated California state law by streaming the band’s songs, like the iconic 1967 cut “Happy Together,” without permission and without paying sound recording royalties.
In doing so, the judge recounted the decade-long story of how the two founders of the Turtles (legally Flo & Eddie, Inc.) filed such cases against music services in courts around the country — and how they had lost in every one of them.
“This case is one of many lawsuits brought by Flo & Eddie, seeking to hold internet and satellite radio services liable for the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of its sound recordings that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972,” the judge wrote. “Flo & Eddie’s action against Pandora is the last case standing.”
The Turtles first sued SiriusXM and Pandora in 2014, claiming that both companies had been illegally refusing to paying royalties for pre-1972 songs. That was a legal gray area at the time, since songs prior to that year had not been covered by federal sound recording copyrights. But the Turtles claimed pre-1972s could still be covered by state-level laws aimed at preventing misappropriation.
Initially, the band won a key ruling in California federal court, finding that California state law contained a so-called public performance right that would require services like Sirius and Pandora to start paying up. But then, slowly but surely, courts around the country — first the top court in New York, then the Florida Supreme Court, then a federal appeals court in California — ruled no such right existed.
“One after another, federal circuit courts and state Supreme Courts answered with a resounding ‘no’,” Judge Gutierrez wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.
In some ways, Wednesday’s ruling is anti-climactic. The larger issues raised by the Turtle’s pioneering lawsuits — whether the owners of a vast swath of American recorded music were entitled to a new revenue stream from services like SiriusXM and Pandora — were largely rendered moot by the passage of the federal Music Modernization Act in 2018. Among other major changes, that law required such royalties to be paid for pre-1972 records, ending the state-level ambiguity that drove the Turtles to sue.
But Judge Gutierrez had previously ruled that the MMA’s new requirements did not apply to pending lawsuits, meaning that the band still could have won a ruling forcing Pandora to hand over unpaid royalties from the years before the MMA’s enactment.
Barring a successful appeal, Wednesday’s ruling foreclosed that possibility: “The court grants Pandora’s motion for summary judgment. This order closes the case.”
In seeking to revive their lawsuit against Pandora, the Turtles argued that, even if no public performance right existed under California state law, the streamer had still violated their so-called reproduction right by illegally copying their music to make it available on the service. But those “repackaged” claims had also been rejected by the other courts, Judge Gutierrez wrote.
“Even if the Court would like to independently consider these claims, its ‘hands are tied,’” the judge wrote. “In the absence of an exclusive right to publicly perform its pre-1972 sound recordings, Flo & Eddie has no viable copyright claim against Pandora.”
A Mississippi woman has dropped her copyright lawsuit claiming that Taylor Swift stole aspects of a self-published book of poetry when she created a companion book for her album Lover, months after the star’s lawyers called it a case that “never should have been filed.”
Teresa La Dart sued Swift last year, claiming that “a number of creative elements” from her 2010 book (also called Lover) were copied into Swift’s book. But in a motion filed Thursday in Tennessee federal court, La Dart’s lawyer said she would permanently drop the case.
The sudden voluntary dismissal — which appears to be unilateral and not the product of any kind of settlement — came after Swift’s lawyers harshly criticized the lawsuit in their last filing. Demanding that case be dismissed, they said it was “legally and factually baseless” and “never should have been filed.”
Those arguments echoed what legal experts told Billboard were serious flaws in La Dart’s case. Lawyers said that she was essentially suing Swift over stock elements that could not be monopolized by any one author: “This person might as well sue anyone who’s ever written a diary or made a scrap book.”
Faced with such strong counter-arguments, dropping the case might have made monetary sense for La Dart. If she had continued to litigate the case and had ultimately lost, the judge may have ordered her to repay Swift’s legal bills — a sum that could have totaled tens of thousands of dollars.
La Dart sued Swift in August over the star’s Lover book — an extra bundled with the special edition of her Lover album that the New York Times called a “must-read companion” for Swifties. Released in four different versions, Swift’s book included a total of 120 pages of personal diary entries, accompanied by photos selected by the singer.
The lawsuit claimed that Swift had borrowed a number of visual elements from La Dart, including “pastel pinks and blues” and an image of the author “photographed in a downward pose.” She also claimed a copyright to the book’s overall format, including “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components” and “interspersed photographs and writings.”
Just one problem: In their response in February, Swift’s lawyers said those elements were nothing more than commonplace features of almost any book, meaning they fall well short of being unique enough to qualify for copyright protection.
“This is a lawsuit that never should have been filed,” attorney Doug Baldridge wrote for the superstar. “These allegedly-infringing elements, each a generic design format, are not subject to copyright protection. Thus, defendants could not possibly have infringed plaintiff’s copyright.”
That motion to dismiss the case remained pending when La Dart dropped the case on Thursday. Baldridge did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
La Dart’s attorney William S. Parks did not immediately return a request for comment. But after Swift’s response in February, he defended bringing the case: “Miss La Dart has questions that will hopefully and eventually be answered regarding her perceived similarities between the two works,” Parks said at the time. “Unfortunately, she felt it necessary to bring this suit in order to possibly obtain such answers. We will see how the judge decides at this point.”
DJ John Summit publicly apologized Tuesday (July 25) for “all the drama” that he “stirred up” last week in a legal dispute with a smaller company over the name of his Off the Grid record label, vowing to change his company’s name to resolve the disagreement.
Early last week, Summit took to Twitter to blast the organizers of a rival “Off the Grid” music event, claiming they had “sued” him and were demanding “7+ figures” over their identical names. Summit, an electronic music A-lister who’s worked with Kaskade, Diplo and others, said at the time that it “f—ing sucks when ppl want to screw u over.”
But after deleting those tweets and going silent over the weekend, Summit made an about-face on Tuesday. In a new tweet, he said he had “acted out of emotion” in last week’s rant and wanted to “truly apologize” to the rival Off The Grid group.
“I’ve been talking w the OTG campout team and apologized to them directly but i also wanted to do so publicly,” Summit wrote. “They’ve agreed to stop pursuing legal action & my team and i are working on a rebrand. in the meantime, to all my fans, please stop sending negative messages to OTG campout. i was wrong in condoning that behavior in any way.”
Summit announced the launch of Off The Grid in March 2022, tweeting that he was “so stoked” to announce his own imprint where there would be “nothing off limits.” The label has since released music by artists including Mau P, Danny Avila and Summit himself, and has hosted live events, including a camping event in Tennessee this past April.
Just one problem: A music promoter named Mikey Made Cromie had already been using the name Off The Grid since 2015 for his own dance music events, including a flagship three-day “campout” that draws as many as 1,000 fans.
In June, attorneys for Cromie sent a cease and desist letter to Summit over the name of his new label. They warned that Cromie claimed Off The Grid as an exclusive trademark and that Summit’s use of an identical name for a company that sells the exact same genre of music would clearly infringe it.
It was that letter that prompted Summit’s outburst on social media last week. “Getting sued for trademark over my ‘off the grid’ label name by a small promoter even tho it’s a common phrase and i built up this brand 100% myself,” Summit wrote at the time. “i REFUSE to get threatened for 7+ figures over a LABEL NAME.”
Cromie, meanwhile, denied that a lawsuit had been filed and said he had never made a demand for seven figures, but confirmed that he had sent the cease and desist letter and wanted Summit to stop using the name. In an email to Billboard last week, Cromie said that Summit’s team “knew about us the whole time and thought we were so small of a company that they could use the name without any recourse.”
In Tuesday’s new tweet, Summit suggested that some kind of formal settlement had been reached, saying he would be changing his name and Cromie’s company would stop pursuing any legal action. But he offered no additional details, like when the name would be changed or whether any money had changed hands.
“All we want now is for both our communities to come together and be able to dance as one,” Summit wrote in his tweet. “i def learned my lesson from this and from here on out, i’m going to focus my attention in a positive light so we can get back to releasing music and throwing fun parties.”
Cromie did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Billboard on Tuesday. But he seemed to confirm the settlement on his Facebook page: Above a giant image of a peace sign, he wrote simply: “Peace is always the answer!”