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 deep dive into the case against Diddy with the help of R. Kelly’s prosecutors; sexual abuse allegations against country star Garth Brooks; a judge refuses to rule on the rights to Jay-Z’s debut album; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Diddy’s Case, Explained By R. Kelly’s Prosecutors
In many ways, the charges unveiled last month against Sean “Diddy” Combs mirror those brought in 2019 against R. Kelly, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2022 after a jury convicted him of decades of abuse. Both cases center on allegations that a powerful musician broke federal racketeering laws – usually aimed at mobsters – by building essentially an organized crime syndicate aimed at facilitating his own sexual abuse.
So to understand more, I dove deep into the Combs case this week with Nadia Shihata and Maria Cruz Melendez, two of the lead prosecutors who tried the case against Kelly. Now in private practice, Shihata and Cruz Melendez discussed the Combs case with Billboard in separate interviews – about how a case like this is built, who else might face charges, and what the fight ahead will look like. Go read our full story here.
Other top stories this week…
STUNNING ACCUSATIONS – Country music star Garth Brooks became the latest music industry figure to face abuse allegations, leveled by a unnamed woman who says he sexually assaulted her while she worked for him as a hairstylist. The case came with an unusual twist: the revelation that it was Brooks who had filed a mysterious John Doe lawsuit last month, seeking to block the publication of allegations that he called “extortion.” In a statement strongly denying the accusations, Brooks said he was “incapable” of such conduct and would “trust the system” to clear his name.
NO IDEA, YOUR HONOR – Martin Shkreli told a federal judge he couldn’t remember all the people with whom he shared copies of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, an ultra-rare Wu-Tang Clan album that he once owned – and that it’s “highly likely” that other people still have copies of the (supposedly) one-of-a-kind work. The disclosure came amid a lawsuit filed against him by PleasrDAO, a digital art collective that purchased Once Upon after Shkreli forfeited it to prosecutors as part of his securities fraud conviction.
REASONABLE DOUBT DISPUTE – With a court-ordered auction looming to sell off Damon Dash’s one-third stake in Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records, the judge overseeing the case said he would not rule on a thorny question of copyright law. That is: Can Jay-Z use copyright termination to retake control of the rights to his debut album Reasonable Doubt from Roc-A-Fella? That’s kind of a crucial question for the Dash auction, since the album is company’s only real revenue-generating asset. But the judge said the case was neither the time nor the place for such a ruling: “The court does not presently have jurisdiction over the validity of Carter’s copyright termination notice.”
THE PLAY MUST NOT GO ON – Ken Caillat, a music producer who worked on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, filed a copyright lawsuit against the creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic, claiming they stole material from his memoir about working on the legendary album. The lawsuit – which calls the play an “unauthorized adaptation” of his 2012 book — raises tricky questions about copyright protection and real-life stories.
R. KELLY AT SCOTUS – The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from R. Kelly over his 2022 convictions in Chicago on child pornography and enticement charges, leaving him with no further direct appeals from a verdict that saw him sentenced to 20 years in prison. The ruling effectively finalizes one of Kelly’s two sets of sex abuse convictions; the other — a September 2021 guilty verdict on racketeering charges brought by prosecutors in New York that resulted in a 30-year prison sentence — is still pending on appeal before a lower appellate court.
TIKTOK LAWSUIT – Attorneys general for more than a dozen states filed lawsuits against TikTok over allegations that the app – a key marketing tool in the modern music industry — is harming the mental health of young people. The lawsuits claim TikTok made its algorithm intentionally addictive, despite knowing that prolonged use will lead to “profound psychological and physiological harms” in children.