{"id":2130,"date":"2024-08-02T16:23:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/french-montana-settles-lawsuit-over-blue-chills-song-sample\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T16:23:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:23:56","slug":"french-montana-settles-lawsuit-over-blue-chills-song-sample","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/french-montana-settles-lawsuit-over-blue-chills-song-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"French Montana Settles Lawsuit Over ‘Blue Chills’ Song Sample"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tFrench Montana has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit claiming his 2022 song \u201cBlue Chills\u201d features an unlicensed sample, resolving allegations that he\u2019d tentatively agreed to pay for the clip but never actually did so.<\/p>\n

\n\tSkylar Gudasz\u2019s 2020 song \u201cFemme Fatale\u201d can be heard playing throughout French\u2019s track \u2014 and in a lawsuit filed last year, she claimed the rapper\u2019s reps initially offered to pay her for the sample. But she said French (Karim Kharbouch) then dropped \u201cBlue Chills\u201d without ever actually signing that deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn court filings on Wednesday (July 31), attorneys for both sides asked a federal judge to dismiss the case. Each side will pay their own costs, attorneys\u2019 fees and expenses, but any of terms of the agreement were not disclosed in court filings.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither side immediately returned requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tGudasz claimed in her August 2023 lawsuit she had first been contacted about French using \u201cFemme Fatale\u201d in May 2022 by Deborah Mannis-Gardner<\/strong>, a well-known industry executive who has been called the \u201cqueen\u201d of sample clearance. Gudasz said she and her lawyer then negotiated a deal in which she would receive more than $7,000 in upfront fees, an .08% cut on master royalties, and a 50% share of the copyright for French\u2019s new composition.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut a month later, she claims that French, without notice, released the song \u201cprior to finalizing and signing a licensing agreement.\u201d Gudasz says that her lawyer quickly alerted Mannis-Gardner about the problem.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOh jeez,\u201d Mannis-Gardner allegedly wrote in a response email, saying she would reach out to French\u2019s attorney about the issue. But Gudasz says the situation was never resolved, claiming Mannis-Gardner \u201ccontinued to maintain there would be a final agreement, sent emails finalizing the licensing agreement and requested invoices from plaintiff, which plaintiff timely sent \u2026 and even sent plaintiff a congratulatory email.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDespite repeated promises from defendants \u2026. no signed agreement, fees, royalties, licensing agreements or monies have ever been sent to plaintiff,\u201d Gudasz\u2019s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tGudasz says the aborted negotiations prove that French \u201cknowingly infringed\u201d the earlier song because they show that he was aware that he needed a license but chose to proceed without one. She claims that French even posted comments to Instagram congratulating her and acknowledged her role in \u201cBlue Chills\u201d on an episode of Apple Music\u2019s Rap Life Radio<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to French Montana, the lawsuit also named producer Harry Fraud (real name Rory William Quigley) as a defendant, as well Sony Music Entertainment and several other companies involved in French\u2019s song. Mannis-Gardner was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit and was not accused of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tWednesday\u2019s settlement resolves the lawsuit\u2019s allegations against all defendants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French Montana has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit claiming his 2022 song \u201cBlue Chills\u201d features an unlicensed sample, resolving allegations that he\u2019d tentatively agreed to pay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1036,2857,2855,303,2856,1307,322,986],"class_list":["post-2130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-blue","tag-chills","tag-french","tag-lawsuit","tag-montana","tag-sample","tag-settles","tag-song"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130","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=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}