{"id":11166,"date":"2026-07-21T19:44:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/cher-cant-win-1m-in-legal-bills-from-sonny-bonos-widow-judge-says\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T19:44:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:44:02","slug":"cher-cant-win-1m-in-legal-bills-from-sonny-bonos-widow-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/cher-cant-win-1m-in-legal-bills-from-sonny-bonos-widow-judge-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Cher Can’t Win $1M in Legal Bills From Sonny Bono’s Widow, Judge Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA federal judge has refused Cher\u2019s request that Sonny Bono\u2019s widow repay more than $1 million in legal bills the music legend racked up during their court battle over royalties to \u201cI Got You Babe\u201d and other hits.<\/p>\n

\n\tCher wanted to be reimbursed for the legal fees she spent defeating Mary Bono\u2019s effort to stop paying royalties under Cher\u2019s divorce settlement with Sonny \u2014 an argument rejected by a judge in 2024. Cher claimed Mary had \u201cdragged\u201d the case out for years by taking \u201cunreasonable positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut in a decision on Monday (July 20) obtained and first reported by Billboard<\/em>, Judge John A. Kronstadt said the rules that would have allowed such forced repayment didn\u2019t apply to Cher and Mary\u2019s specific dispute, since it centered more on contracts than federal copyright law: \u201cThe motion is denied,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling leaves Cher the winner of the overall case, but stuck paying an eye-watering legal tab she says ended up at $1,023,605 \u2014 a bill that\u2019s not atypical for top-flight law firms handling years of complex litigation. Her attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tMary is currently challenging Cher\u2019s earlier victory in the case at a federal appeals court, which has yet to rule on it. Her attorneys also did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tSonny and Cher\u2019s 1978 divorce settlement gave her a permanent 50% cut of the publishing revenue from songs written before they split up, including \u201cThe Beat Goes On\u201d and \u201cBaby Don\u2019t Go.\u201d Bono later married Mary, then passed away suddenly in a 1998 skiing accident.<\/p>\n

\n\tMary sparked the dispute in 2021 by arguing she was no longer required to pay out under the divorce deal because of copyright\u2019s termination right \u2014 a provision that allows songwriters and their heirs to win back control of their songs decades after they gave them away. Mary argued the divorce settlement was no different than a songwriter selling their rights to a publisher, meaning she could void it under termination.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a May 2024 decision, Kronstadt ruled that termination didn\u2019t apply to Sonny and Cher\u2019s divorce settlement, which he said was a contract for financial compensation rather than a copyright assignment. In November, he finalized that victory for Cher.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing that ruling, Cher said that it was only fair that Mary repay the attorney\u2019s fees she had racked up defeating a legal argument that sought to revoke \u201cmillions of dollars\u201d in her royalties. She argued that Mary\u2019s positions had been unreasonable and had made the case last far longer than necessary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant argued, repeatedly and frivolously, that a federal statute that expressly states it does not affect state-law rights somehow extinguishes those state-law rights,\u201d her lawyers wrote in January.<\/p>\n

\n\tCopyright law, unlike many other areas of the American legal system, allows for victorious parties to demand their opponents repay their legal bills in certain cases. But in Monday\u2019s ruling, Kronstadt said that rubric didn\u2019t apply to the case for the same basic reason he\u2019d sided with Cher on the dispute itself: that the litigation centered more on a dispute over contract law than over federal copyrights.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt has been determined that this action arises under California contract law, not [federal copyright termination rules],\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cIn light of the foregoing, because [the Copyright Act] does not apply to the matter at issue, plaintiff\u2019s motion is denied.\u201d<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has refused Cher\u2019s request that Sonny Bono\u2019s widow repay more than $1 million in legal bills the music legend racked up during their court battle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1922,1472,1470,423,136,1471,1473,834],"class_list":["post-11166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bills","tag-bonos","tag-cher","tag-judge","tag-legal","tag-sonny","tag-widow","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}