Courts

No Coming Together Right Now: Musical Class Action Shot Down

I wanna rock! And get paid for it!

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A person playing a rock and roll guitar

(Image via Getty)

Reclamation stories where the little guys group up to fight the powers that be are inspirational. Well, the one’s that are successful at least. A recent effort of two bands to band together has just been disbanded. It’ll make more sense after you’ve read the quote from Reuters:

A Manhattan federal court on Friday rejected a motion by a group of rock musicians to proceed with a class-action lawsuit against Universal Music Group and its Capitol Records subsidiary, which they accused of ignoring notices that they were reclaiming their copyrights from the label.

The musicians, including singer-songwriter Syd Straw and members of rock bands The Dickies and The Dream Syndicate, have unique situations that require separate lawsuits, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Friday.

They had hoped to represent a much larger class of artists who filed termination notices with UMG.

The usual culprit when individuality kills a musical group’s effort is Lead Singers Disease, not stringent requirements on what constitutes a class! That witty observation was supposed to be a joke. That said, the musicians are dead serious about getting their money’s worth — why wouldn’t they be — and aren’t done with the legal collaboration angle.

The musicians’ co-lead attorney Roy W. Arnold of Blank Rome said in a statement that they were disappointed with the decision and are considering an appeal.

A representative for UMG did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The crux of the suit lies with an idiosyncratic element of copyright law that, to my mind, looks like dibs protections.

A provision of U.S. copyright law allows artists to terminate agreements to transfer their copyrights and reclaim them after decades in some circumstances. Artists who signed contracts with UMG predecessors in the 1970s and 80s sued UMG in 2019 for allegedly rejecting their notices and continuing to sell their music without permission.

UMG argues the musicians cannot reclaim the copyrights because the songs were “works made for hire” for which the termination right does not apply.

Kaplan said Friday that the musicians could not represent a broader class of artists who sent termination notices to UMG with effective dates between 2013 and 2031.

Kaplan found that questions of whether each work was made for hire and every notice was valid were too fact-specific to justify a single class action.

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Whether the suit plays out as a class action or not, I pray to the Gods of Music that the theory of the case is interesting. Sure, they could go with an easy “The Right To Rock Is Inalienable” refrain, but why do that when they could channel Funkadelic. “We want the (copy)rights! Gotta have those rights! Owww!”

A related lawsuit filed against Sony Music by musicians including former New York Dolls singer David Johansen has been paused since 2021 for settlement discussions. Here’s a list of cites for those interested in seeing if the cases go harmonic or cacophonous.

The UMG case is Waite v. UMG Recordings Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:19-cv-01091.

For the musicians: Roy W. Arnold, Greg Bordo, David Perry and Heidi Crikelair of Blank Rome; Evan Cohen and Maryann Marzano of Cohen Music Law

For UMG: Ariel Atlas, Rollin Ransom and Lisa Gilford of Sidley Austin; Richard Mandel and Thomas Kjellberg of Cowan Liebowitz & Latman

Keep rocking. Legally speaking.

Artists Can’t Band Together In Universal Music Copyright Class Action [Reuters]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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