{"id":1414,"date":"2024-06-18T20:30:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T20:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wu-tang-lawsuit-justin-timberlake-arrest-young-thug-more-law-news\/"},"modified":"2024-06-18T20:30:13","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T20:30:13","slug":"wu-tang-lawsuit-justin-timberlake-arrest-young-thug-more-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wu-tang-lawsuit-justin-timberlake-arrest-young-thug-more-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Wu-Tang Lawsuit, Justin Timberlake Arrest, Young Thug & More Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from <\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s one-of-a-kind album is at the center of a lawsuit against Martin Shkreli; Justin Timberlake faces a drunk driving charge; Young Thug\u2019s lawyer avoids jail and demands that a judge recuse himself; Drake is sued by Members Only for trademark infringement; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Once Upon A Time In Court<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tWhen the Wu-Tang Clan auctioned off their one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin<\/em> to Martin Shkreli <\/strong>in 2015, the deal was famous for its kooky restrictions. A rumor about a clause allowing Bill Murray to steal the CD in a heist turned out to be fictional, but the deal really did include a requirement that the music could not be released to the general public until 2103. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. Shkreli soon became the hated \u201cPharma Bro\u201d who spiked the price of crucial AIDS medications; he then forfeited the album to federal prosecutors after he was convicted on securities fraud charges. Years later, the government then re-sold Shaolin<\/em> to a group called PleasrDAO.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But those weird contractual restrictions came back into the picture twice this past week \u2014 first when Pleasr sued Shkreli for threatening to leak the album online, and again when Pleasr itself said it would be offering fans the chance to buy a snippet of the mysterious album for just $1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Go read our full story on the lawsuit against Shkreli<\/a><\/strong>, which Billboard <\/em>will be monitoring closely as it moves forward in court. And then go read our deep-dive into how a famously restricted album<\/a><\/strong> is being \u201coffered to the public\u201d decades earlier than it was supposed to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tTIMBERLAKE ARREST\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 Justin Timberlake was arrested<\/a><\/strong> in the Hamptons on suspicion of driving while intoxicated after a police officer pulled him over for running a stop sign and failing to stay in his lane. According to court records, Timberlake told police he \u201chad one martini and I followed my friends home,\u201d but his \u201ceyes were bloodshot and glassy\u201d and the officer smelled \u201ca strong odor of an alcoholic beverage\u201d before he failed a field sobriety test.<\/p>\n

NO JAIL FOR THUG\u2019S LAWYER<\/strong> \u2013 Young Thug\u2019s attorney in his Atlanta gang trial isn\u2019t going<\/a><\/strong> to jail \u2014 at least not for now. Days after Judge Ural Glanville<\/strong> held Brian Steel<\/strong> in contempt over a bizarre courtroom episode centered on claims of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness, Georgia\u2019s Supreme Court hit pause on Steel\u2019s sentence while it reviews the judge\u2019s decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RECUSAL REFUSAL<\/strong> \u2013 Meanwhile, Steel demanded that Glanville recuse himself from the case, arguing that the secret meeting was an \u201cunforgiveable\u201d error and that the judge had \u201cforfeited its role as an impartial judge and has become a member of the prosecution team.\u201d The judge quickly denied<\/a><\/strong> the motion, saying Steel had provided only \u201cbare assertions and legal conclusions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

MEMBERS ONLY v. DRAKE <\/strong>\u2013 Drake\u2019s production company was hit with a lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> from the apparel brand Members Only, which claims that he\u2019s been selling tour merch that infringed the company\u2019s trademarks. The superstar\u2019s concert t-shirts are a reference to a track of the same name on his 2023 album For All the Dogs<\/em>, but the lawsuit says that\u2019s no excuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CARTEL CONCERTS? Angel Del Villar<\/strong>, the CEO of Los Angeles-based Del Records, asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges<\/a><\/strong> accusing him of doing business with a concert promoter linked to Mexican drug cartels. Del Villar\u2019s lawyers say the indictment, handed down in 2022, is unfairly vague and the sign of an eventual \u201csucker punch\u201d by prosecutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LIL UZI SUED OVER UNPAID BILLS<\/strong> \u2013 Lil Uzi Vert was sued by a touring production company called M99 Studios that claims the rapper owes more than $500,000<\/a><\/strong> in unpaid bills for work done at last year\u2019s Rolling Loud, Roots Picnic and other events. Among other things, the lawsuit claims the bills involve satisfying the rapper\u2019s \u201cunrealistic production requests,\u201d including finding and hiring more than two dozen adult dancers to appear onstage at a concert last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DIVORCE DRAMA <\/strong>\u2013 Billy Ray Cyrus filed an emergency motion<\/a><\/strong> in Tennessee court amid his ongoing divorce from the singer Firerose, accusing her of nearly $100,000 in unauthorized credit card charges and seeking a temporary restraining order to stop her.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2017,2001,153,303,310,1095,2002,1858,1094],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-arrest","tag-justin","tag-law","tag-lawsuit","tag-news","tag-thug","tag-timberlake","tag-wutang","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","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=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}