Legal
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The man accused of murdering Migos rapper Takeoff was released from a Houston jail late Wednesday (Jan. 4) after posting a $1 million bond, court records show.
According to filings in Harris County court and from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office obtained by Billboard, Patrick Xavier Clark posted bond on Wednesday and was released at 8:47 p.m. local time. He’s due back in court for a hearing on March 9.
Bond had initially been set at $2 million, but Clark’s lawyers argued that that figure was excessive and potentially unconstitutional — essentially a backdoor to simply denying bond altogether. After they demanded the figure be lowered to $100,000, the judge agreed to reduce it to $1 million on Dec. 14.
Court records show Clark will still be under 24/7 hour arrest, cannot have any contact with anyone involved, and will be required to wear a GPS monitor that can immediately notify prosecutors and defense attorneys of any violations. He must also submit to drug testing and cannot drink alcohol, as court records indicate that “alcohol was a factor in the offense.”
A representative for the late star did not immediately return a request for comment on Clark’s release. Clark’s lawyer also did not respond to a request for comment.
Takeoff (born Kirshnik Khari Ball), 28, was shot and killed Nov. 1 during a private party he attended at 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston with his uncle and bandmate, Quavo. The musician was killed by “penetrating gunshot wounds of head and torso into arm,” according to a report from the Harris County coroner’s office. Clark, 33, was arrested on the east side of Houston on Nov. 1 and charged with murder; another man, 22-year-old Cameron Joshua, was arrested and charged with the unlawful carrying of a weapon.
Sony Music has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit that claimed the name of Future’s chart-topping album High Off Life infringed the trademark rights of a creative agency that uses that exact same name.
High Off Life LLC sued Sony in 2020, alleging the label had “destroyed” the smaller company’s brand by using the name for the title of Future’s eight studio album. Though Sony argued an album name was protected by the First Amendment, a federal judge refused to dismiss the case last year.
But in a motion filed Tuesday, both sides agreed to end the case. The terms of the settlement, like whether any money exchanged hands or any names would be changed, were not publicly disclosed. Attorneys for both sides did not return requests for comment.
High Off Life reached the top spot on the Billboard 200 in May 2020. It was originally set to be titled “Life Is Good” – the name of the album’s third single – but the name was switched at the last minute as the COVID-19 pandemic swept made life somewhat less than good.
That was a problem for High Off Life LLC, which filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in October 2020 against Sony and Future’s Freebandz Productions. The company claimed it had been selling “High Off Life” apparel since 2009, had launched a creative agency under the name in 2017, and operates a hip-hop YouTube channel called “High Off Life TV.”
The case claimed that Sony’s promotion of Future’s album had buried the smaller company in search results: “Overnight, Defendants destroyed HOL’s investment of many years and many thousands of dollars into building consumer recognition.”
To beat the lawsuit, Sony and Freebandz cited something called the Rogers test — a legal doctrine that makes it very difficult to win lawsuits over the use of brand names in “expressive works” music. The rule says that authors have a First Amendment right to use trademarks in their work unless it explicitly misleads consumers, or is completely irrelevant to the artwork.
That argument might have prevailed eventually, but U.S. District Judge Scott Hardy ruled in April that it was too early to make that call. The decision allowed the case to proceed into discovery, where both sides to gather evidence and build their cases.
A federal judge has tossed out a sexual abuse lawsuit filed against Marilyn Manson by model Ashley Morgan Smithline, citing the fact that she failed to retain a new lawyer after splitting with her old legal team last fall.
Smithline’s lawsuit, one of many claims of sexual abuse filed against Manson (real name Brian Warner) over the past two years, alleged that the rocker raped and abused her multiple times between 2010 and 2013. But in an order issued Tuesday (Jan. 3), Judge Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha dismissed the case.
The reason? After Smithline split with her attorney Jay D. Ellwanger in October, the judge gave her until Dec. 5 to find a new lawyer — or to explain how she’d handle the case on her own as a so-called pro se litigant. She never did either, leading to Tuesday’s decision.
“Plaintiff has not filed a response as of the date of this order,” the judge wrote. “The court, therefore, dismisses this action … for plaintiffs failure to prosecute the action.”
The case was dismissed “without prejudice” — meaning Smithline could still refile the same claims at some point in the future. She could not immediately be located for comment; Ellwanger did not return a request for comment.
In a statement to Billboard, Manson’s attorney Howard King praised the outcome: “We thank and commend Ashley Smithline for dismissing her claims against Brian Warner without seeking or receiving anything in return. Ms. Smithline has refused to be manipulated by others who are trying to pursue their own agendas against Mr. Warner. We wish her well and will continue to work to assure that a significant price will be paid by those who have tried to abuse our legal system.”
Manson has faced multiple accusations of wrongdoing over the past two years.
Evan Rachel Wood, who began publicly dating Manson in 2007 when she was 19 and he was 39, accused him in a February 2021 Instagram post of “grooming me when I was a teenager” before he “horrifically abused me for years.” Those allegations were followed by separate lawsuits from Smithline, former assistant Ashley Walters, Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco and a Jane Doe accuser.
In her lawsuit, Smithline made graphic and disturbing allegations of sexual assault against Manson. She alleged that she and Manson began a consensual relationship in 2010, but that it “quickly became apparent that consensual sex was not enough for Mr. Warner.”
“Ms. Smithline awoke from unconsciousness with her ankles and wrists tied together behind her back and Mr. Warner sexually penetrating her,” Smithline’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. “Ms. Smithline told Mr. Warner to stop and said no multiple times, and Mr. Warner told her to ‘shut the fuck up’ and ‘be quiet.’”
Manson has denied all of the allegations against him and even filed his own defamation lawsuit accusing Wood and another woman of orchestrating the many legal attacks against him. In the March 2022 complaint, he said Wood’s own “malicious falsehood” was part of an “organized attack” aimed at derailing his career, in which she had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously.” Wood denies those allegations.
Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi is facing a new lawsuit over a decades-old claim of sexual assault against two minors.
In a civil complaint filed in Los Angeles on Friday (Dec. 30), two Jane Does allege the singer-songwriter and her ex-producer, Sergio Andrade, “groomed” and “exploited” them when they were between the ages of 13 and 15 back in the early 1990s.
The lawsuit, independently obtained by Billboard and first reported on Wednesday by Rolling Stone, does not specifically name Trevi or Andrade — listing them only as anonymous Doe defendants — but based on the timeline of events and the details of the albums included in the suit, it’s clear that Trevi and Andrade are the defendants.
According to the plaintiffs, Trevi and Andrade used their “role, status, and power as a well-known and successful Mexican pop star and a famous producer” to coerce sexual contact with them over a course of years, much of it occurring in California. As a result of the sexual harassment, abuse and assault, the Plaintiffs have “suffered severe emotional, physical and psychological distress, including humiliation, shame, and guilt.”
The 30-page lawsuit, which includes claims of childhood sexual abuse, harassment and/or assault, was filed just days before the expiration of California’s Child Victims Act, which temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse lawsuits. After a three-year window of availability, the deadline to file such long-delayed lawsuits was Dec. 31, 2022.
The new allegations against the “Todos Me Miran” singer come nearly 20 years after she was acquitted by a judge and found not guilty on charges of rape, kidnapping and corruption of minors. This resulted in the immediate release of Trevi, who was being held at a prison in Chihuahua, Mexico and faced up to 25 years behind bars.
The previous trial occurred after Trevi, Andrade and backup singer María Raquenel Portillo, also known as Mary Boquitas, were arrested in January 2000 in Rio de Janeiro for allegedly luring young girls into a cult-like pornographic ring. Former vocalist Karina Yapor, who filed criminal charges against the so-called Trevi clan, alleged that backup recruits wanting to join the band were forced to have sexual relations with Andrade.
A representative for Trevi declined a request for comment.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
The final two installments of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly docuseries series ended with a pair of bombshell revelations about the imprisoned singer’s controversial marriage to a then-underage Aaliyah. The two episodes that debuted on Monday and Tuesday, focused in on Kelly’s 2022 federal trial, which included allegations that the singer and his team allegedly forced Aaliyah’s family to sign a non-disclosure agreement in the wake of the annulment of the performers’ brief marriage.
Kelly and Aaliyah were married in secret in August 1994 when the “Rock the Boat” singer was just 15, even though their marriage certificate listed her age as 18; the marriage was reportedly annulled by Aaliyah’s parents in Feb. 1995. Interviews with some of Kelly’s and Aaliyah’s entourages revealed some of the details of the NDA, which reportedly came after Aaliyah’s father was incensed by the marriage.
Longtime friend and former bodyguard Gem Pratt told the Surviving team that Aaliyah’s family signed a contract with Kelly that promised they would not press charges against him for the illegal marriage after the annulment if Kelly promised to sell them the rights to his first three albums. During last year’s federal trial a jury found Kelly guilty on three counts of child pornography and three counts of enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity; Aaliyah was referred to as Jane Doe #1 at that trial.
“Her dad [Michael Haughton] didn’t want her anywhere near him,” Pratt said in the series about wanting to put distance between Kelly, who was 27 at at the time of the marriage, and Aaliyah, whose debut album, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number — released when she was 14 — was produced and mostly written by Kelly. The stories of Kelly and Aaliyah’s secret marriage were rumored at the time, but the final episodes of the Lifetimes series put the details of the aftermath into sharper focus.
They include allegations about members of Kelly’s inner circle allegedly looking the other way at Kelly’s abuse of women girls and young men over decades, with Pratt saying that “He [Kelly] couldn’t do this by himself… it’s clear as day there were enablers.” Variety noted that the Aaliyah NDA came up during Kelly’s 2022 New York trial, though it did not receive widespread media coverage at the time; Chicago reporter Jim DeRogatis originally broke the news of the NDA, telling the New York Times Popcast podcast in 2018 that the agreement was a “harrowing document… A non-disclosure agreement on both her part and Kelly’s, vowing not to pursue further legal claims for physical abuse. So, it wasn’t just an underage sexual relationship, he hit her, allegedly, according to that court document.”
A lawyer for Kelly had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment about the NDA at press time and Kelly has maintained his innocence and is appealing the convictions.
In Sept. 2021, Kelly was found guilty in a New York trial of nine counts, including racketeering and 14 underlying acts including sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and sex trafficking charges, as well as eight counts of violating the sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act. In June 2022, Kelly, 55, was sentenced to 30 years in prison; the singer is still facing additional sentencing in Chicago as well as pending felony sex crime charges in Minnesota.
The final chapters of producer/director Dream Hampton’s Surviving series also included new allegations of Kelly’s sexual abuse from a survivor named Ebonié Doyle, who claimed she was raped by Kelly just days after his marriage to Aaliyah. Doyle said she was 16 when Kelly’s limo pulled up on her after one of his shows, setting off a relationship that resulted in her mother kicking Doyle out of the house when she discovered it.
After moving in with Kelly, Doyle said she became subject to Kelly’s “controlling” ways, which included forcing her to sit in a specific sexual position for hours until her posture was to his liking. At the time there were whispers about the singer’s relationship with the underage Aaliyah — Doyle noticed she and the singer were similar in stature and appearance — and said at one point she found a sex tape featuring Kelly and Aaliyah. When Kelly found out that she’d seen the tape, Doyle said he pushed her down a flight of stairs.
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 special New Year’s newsletter, looking back at the biggest legal stories from 2022, the top stories from over the holidays, and what to watch in 2023.A quick programming note: Starting immediately, the email version of the Legal Beat newsletter is now free. All current readers will continue to get the newsletter directly into their inbox every Tuesday, but now anyone else can also sign up HERE to receive a weekly recap of every big story from the world of music law.
Year In Review: 2022’s Top Legal Stories
Some of the most important music industry stories of 2022 were legal stories, so we put together a handy year-end guideto catch you up on all the big developments.As always, copyright cases dominated the list. Taylor Swift finally escaped a case over “Shake It Off,” Ed Sheeran won a big trial over “Shape of You (but faces another one soon over “Thinking Out Loud”) and Katy Perry made important case law when she defeated a case over “Dark Horse.”Cardi B had a big year all by herself. She won a $4 million defamation verdict against a bomb-throwing YouTuber, then beat back a multimillion lawsuit claiming she Photoshopped a random guy onto the “raunchy” cover of a mixtape. Oh, and she also resolved a long-standing criminal case in New York by taking a misdemeanor plea deal.But arguably the most important story of the year was the use of rap lyrics in criminal trials.Billboard did a deep-dive in March, detailing how the practice had persisted for years despite longstanding criticism that it unfairly sways juries and threatens artistic expression — and that was before we knew what the year had in store. In May, hip-hop superstars Young Thug and Gunna were hit with a sweeping indictment that quoted heavily from their lyrics and then left to sit in jail for months, bringing unprecedented new attention to the issue. Atlanta prosecutors offered no apologies for the music-heavy charges, but in September, lawmakers in California enacted landmark legislation that would sharply restrict the practice in that state, creating a blueprint that other jurisdictions might follow.
Top stories to watch in 2023…
RAP ON TRIAL – A big issue from 2022 figures to take center stage again in 2023. Jury selection in the case against Young Thug and other YSL members (though not Gunna, who pleaded out in December) will kick off next week in Atlanta, setting the stage for a blockbuster trial that could last many months. And after coming up just short in 2022, lawmakers in New York will again try to pass legislation that could limit how prosecutors in that state use rap music to win convictions.COPYRIGHT CONTINUUM – After a year full of big copyright cases, 2023 could be even more jam-packed. Dua Lipa will try to evade two separate infringement lawsuits over her smash hit “Levitating,” while Ed Sheeran will face a jury trial over whether his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s iconic “Let’s Get It On.” And don’t forget the big class actions against the labels over termination rights, the looming Supreme Court ruling over Andy Warhol’s image of Prince or the upcoming trial in a case against Post Malone.DR. LUKE V. KESHA – After nearly nine years of litigation, a trial is finally set for July in Dr. Luke’s defamation lawsuit against Kesha over her bombshell rape accusations against the producer. A trial had previously been scheduled to start in February, but it cannot take place until New York’s highest court decides two pending appeals dealing with big issues — big for both the case and for media law generally.
What you missed over the holiday week…
CARDI WINS AGAIN – A federal judge refused to overturn Cardi B’s courtroom victory in a lawsuit filed by Kevin Brophy, a man who was unwittingly Photoshopped to look like he was performing oral sex on the superstar on the cover of her debut mixtape. Two months after jurors cleared Cardi of any wrongdoing, the judge ruled that he would not “second-guess” the verdict.MEGAN HEADED TO TRIAL – A judge sided with Megan Thee Stallion in an early skirmish in her legal war with record label 1501 Certified Entertainment, refusing to grant the company a quick victory and ordering the case to instead be decided by a jury. 1501 had argued that the judge himself could decide whether her 2021 release Something for Thee Hotties counted as an “album” under her record deal, but her lawyers said she must be “allowed her day in court.” STEVEN TYLER ABUSE CASE – Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler was hit with a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor in the 1970s, claiming he convinced her parents to sign over custody and forced her to get an abortion. The case was filed by Julia Holcomb, who says she was the underage girl that Tyler repeatedly referenced in his racy 2011 memoir, in which he said he was “so in love I almost took a teen bride.”
A woman who alleges Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1986 sued the comedian-actor, NBCUniversal and other companies Friday (Dec. 30) in New York, where five other women filed a similar lawsuit earlier this month.
Stacey Pinkerton says she was a 21-year-old flight attendant and model that year when she claims Cosby drugged her at a restaurant in Illinois and took her back to a hotel room in Chicago. The lawsuit alleges Cosby “engaged in forced sexual intercourse” with her while she was incapacitated from the drugs.
The lawsuit comes more than a year after Cosby left prison after his 2018 sexual assault conviction in Pennsylvania was overturned. Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who said Cosby sexually abused her at the Playboy Mansion when she was a teenager in 1975.
Pinkerton says the alleged assault came after she had met Cosby in New York and he promised to help her career. She says she had a role in an episode of The Cosby Show on NBC, but did not appear in the final edit.
Months after the alleged assault, Pinkerton said Cosby invited her to his show at a Chicago theater, where she claims he forcefully kissed and touched her.
“Cosby engaged in the same or similar pattern of conduct with his victims,” Pinkerton’s lawsuit says, “including expressing interest in advancing their careers, giving them roles on The Cosby Show, using The Cosby Show and its filming locations as a means to access, isolate, sexually harass, and sexually assault women, using drugs to incapacitate his victims, and forcibly engaging in sexual acts with them without their consent.”
The lawsuit alleges that NBC, Kaufman Astoria Studios and Carsey-Werner Television should have known Cosby was a danger to women and failed to protect Pinkerton from him.
Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt said Friday night that Cosby “continues to vehemently deny all allegations waged against him and looks forward to defending himself in court.”
“As we have always stated, and now America can see, this isn’t about justice for victims of alleged sexual assault, it’s ALL ABOUT MONEY,” Wyatt wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “We believe that the courts, as well as the court of public opinion, will follow the rules of law and relieve Mr. Cosby of these alleged accusations.”
Representatives of NBCUniversal, Kaufman Astoria Studios and Carsey-Werner Television did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night. All three companies were involved in the production of The Cosby Show,” Pinkerton’s lawsuit said.
The lawsuits by Pinkerton and the five other women were filed under New York’s one-year window for adults to file sexual abuse complaints for allegations that had fallen outside the statute of limitations to sue.
Cosby served nearly three years in prison before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction, finding that he gave incriminating testimony in a deposition about the encounter only after believing he had immunity from prosecution. The trial judge and an intermediate appeals court had found no evidence of such immunity.
Seven other accusers received a settlement from Cosby’s insurers in the wake of the Pennsylvania conviction over a defamation lawsuit they had filed in Massachusetts. Their lawsuit said that Cosby and his agents disparaged them in denying their allegations of abuse.
Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is facing a new lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor in the 1970s, filed by a woman who claims she was referenced in the singer’s memoir as almost his “teen bride.”
In a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles court, Julia Holcomb says Tyler used his “power as a well-known musician and rock star” in order to “gain access to, groom, manipulate, exploit” and sexually assault her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old.
The lawsuit does not name Tyler, listing only an anonymous John Doe defendant. But Holcomb’s lawyers repeatedly quote from Tyler’s memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? when referring to the alleged perpetrator, who they identify as a “leading member of a world-famous rock band.” Tyler’s book itself, reviewed by Billboard, also lists a “Julia Halcomb” in the acknowledgments.
“She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit. “I was so in love I almost took a teen bride.”
The lawsuit alleges that Tyler convinced Holcomb’s parents to grant him guardianship over her — an accusation that also came with quotes from his memoir: “I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state.”
The lawsuit also claims Tyler impregnated Holcomb but later “pressured and coerced” her into eventually aborting the pregnancy.
Billboard independently obtained a copy of the lawsuit, which was first reported Thursday by Rolling Stone. A representative for Tyler did not immediately return a request for comment.
The allegations against Tyler are not new. Holcomb made similar accusations in a 2011 article published by the anti-abortion website LifesiteNews, and she made the same claims in 2020 during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s television show on Fox News.
The new lawsuit, which included claims for sexual battery, sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotion distress, was filed just days before the expiration of California’s Child Victims Act, which temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse lawsuits. After a three-year window of availability, the deadline to file such long-delayed lawsuits is Dec. 31.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
A Houston judge sided with Megan Thee Stallion on Wednesday in an early skirmish in her legal war with record label 1501 Certified Entertainment, refusing to grant the company a quick victory and ordering the case to instead be decided by a jury.
Megan has long been at odds with the label over a record deal she calls “unconscionable,” but the current battle was filed earlier this year over claims that 1501 was unfairly refusing to count her 2021 Something for Thee Hotties as an “album” to keep her locked into the deal for another release.
In September, 1501 asked a judge to quickly decide that dispute himself — arguing Megan’s contract had a clear definition of “album” and that Thee Hotties obviously didn’t meet it. Megan’s lawyers fought back, saying there were key disputes that need to be decided a jury and that the rapper must be “allowed her day in court.”
On Wednesday, Judge Robert Schaffer sided with Megan in that dispute, denying 1501’s motion and allowing the “album” question to proceed to a jury trial. The ruling came no written explanation, simply saying Schaffer was “of the opinion that the motion should be and hereby is denied in its entirety.” A trial date has not yet been set.
A rep for Megan declined to comment on the ruling. Steven Zager, lead attorney for 1501, told Billboard he disagreed with the judge’s decision but stressed that the ruling had not resolved any issues in either side’s favor.
The star rapper (real name Megan Pete) has been fighting with 1501 for more than two years now, claiming the company duped a young artist into signing an “unconscionable” record deal in 2018 that was well-below industry standards. She says that when she signed a new management deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in 2019, she got “real lawyers” who helped her see that the deal was “crazy.”
She filed the current case in February, claiming 1501 had wrongly classified Thee Hotties as something less than an album — a key distinction, since she owes a set number of albums under the record deal. 1501 quickly countersued, arguing that Thee Hotties contained just only 29 minutes of original material and was obviously not an “album.”
The two sides then escalated the case last summer. Megan filed a new complaint seeking more than $1 million in damages over claims that 1501 had “systematically failed” to pay enough royalties. 1501 then fired back with new accusations of its own, claiming it’s actually Megan who owes “millions of dollars.”
With those other issues still pending, 1501 asked the judge in September for so-called summary judgment on the core dispute — meaning a quick ruling about whether Thee Hotties counted as an album. The company argued there was nothing ambiguous about the contract, and that the judge himself could decide the issue without further proceedings.
“There is no amount of discovery that will change the answer to that question,” 1501’s lawyers wrote at the time. “The court can compare the recording to the contractual requirements for an album and determine that ‘Something for Thee Hotties’ is not an album as a matter of law.”
Megan’s lawyers sharply disagreed. In a response this month, they cited supposed disputes over basic facts, like whether or not 1501 gave approval prior to the release of Thee Hotties, and said those disagreements would need to be sorted out by a jury, not a judge.
“Pete should be allowed her day in court to present evidence and testimony to the jury demonstrating that she has done all that was required of her in the delivery and release of her albums,” her lawyers wrote.
A federal judge is refusing to overturn Cardi B’s courtroom victory in lawsuit over a man who was unwittingly photoshopped into a “raunchy” album cover, ruling that he would not “second-guess” the verdict handed down by a jury.
Kevin Brophy had asked the judge to toss out an October jury verdict clearing Cardi of wrongdoing over the bawdy cover of her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1, which Brophy claimed had “humiliated” him by making it appear he was performing oral sex on the superstar rapper.
But such rulings are reserved for rare situations where a jury clearly got something wrong — like a verdict that flies in the face of the evidence that was actually presented in court. And in a ruling on Wednesday, Judge Cormac J. Carney said there were plenty of reasons why the jury had sided with Cardi.
“In short, reasons abound to sustain the jury’s verdict,” the judge wrote. “It is not for this Court to second-guess the verdict now.” Notably, the judge also ordered Brophy to repay the legal bills that Cardi incurred defending the lawsuit, which can often amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Among other reasons for siding with Cardi, Judge Carney said jurors could have been swayed by evidence and testimony that Brophy had not actually suffered any harm – none at all – as a result of Cardi’s supposedly humiliating album cover.
“Brophy testified that neither he nor any member of his family sought treatment from a psychiatrist or psychologist or marital or family counseling for the alleged humiliation, embarrassment, and mental distress,” the judge wrote, adding that Brophy had also seen no adverse impact on his professional career. “He is happily married to his wife, Lindsay, who also testified to the strength of their relationship, and their eldest child, who saw the mixtape cover once, never mentioned it to Brophy again.”
Released in 2016, the cover image of Gangsta Bitch featured the then-rising star is seen 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, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body.
Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover. He claimed Cardi and others violated his so-called right of publicity by using 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. And after a four-day trial in which the star herself demanded “receipts” to support the allegations, a jury agreed – clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims.
In Wednesday’s decision upholding that verdict, Judge Carney said jurors had an “ample basis” to reach that decision. Among other things, he cited testimony about how the model in the image appeared to be a Black man, while Brophy himself is white.
“The jury could have reasonably concluded that the back tattoo on the model on the mixtape cover at issue in this suit was not sufficiently identifiable with Brophy,” the judge wrote. “Because the model’s face is not visible, identification based on facial appearance is impossible.”
The judge said jurors also had good reason to believe the cover represented a “transformative fair use” of the image – meaning it was legal for Cardi to use it to create her own new image on the cover.
“Brophy’s tattoo played a minor role in what was a larger visual commentary on sexual politics,” the judge wrote. “Brophy’s tattoo was but one tattoo on the back of the model, who was himself but one part of a suggestive portrayal of a man with his head between Cardi B’s legs.”
“The purpose, Cardi B testified, was to show her in control, reversing traditional gender roles,” the judge concluded.
Wednesday’s is likely not the end of the road for Brophy’s lawsuit, since he can still take the case to a federal appeals court to seek a reversal of Judge Carney’s decision. Brophy’s attorney declined to comment on the ruling when reached by Billboard.