{"id":2928,"date":"2024-10-08T20:14:54","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T20:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/bandmates-say-they-didnt-approve-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2024-10-08T20:14:54","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T20:14:54","slug":"bandmates-say-they-didnt-approve-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/bandmates-say-they-didnt-approve-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Bandmates Say They Didn’t Approve Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tWeeks after Nelly\u2019s former St. Lunatics groupmates sued him for allegedly cutting them out of royalties for his chart-topping breakout album Country Grammar<\/em>, three of the ex-bandmates now say they never wanted to be part of the lawsuit and must be removed immediately.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a letter sent last month, Nelly\u2019s attorney warned the lawyer who filed the case last month that Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb) had recently retained his services and had \u201cinformed me that they did not authorize you to include them as plaintiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey are hereby demanding you remove their names forthwith,\u201d N. Scott Rosenblum<\/strong> wrote in the Sept. 24 letter, which was obtained by Billboard<\/em>. \u201cFailure to do so will cause them to explore any and all legal remedies available to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe move is a major twist just weeks after Harper, Kyjuan and Webb joined fellow St. Lunatics member Ali (Ali Jones) in filing the lawsuit against Nelly (Cornell Haynes). But it also makes sense after Nelly\u2019s performance on Sunday (Oct. 6) at the American Music Awards, where all three men joined him on stage and appeared to be on good terms.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe withdrawal of Harper, Kyjuan and Webb means that the case is now essentially a dispute between Nelly and Ali alone. Ali\u2019s attorney who filed the case, Gail M. Walton<\/strong>, did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tA group of high school friends from St. Louis, the St. Lunatics rose to prominence in the late 1990s with \u201cGimme What U Got\u201d, and their debut album Free City <\/em>\u2014 released a year after Country Grammar<\/em> \u2014 was a hit of its own, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their Sept. 18 complaint, the bandmates claimed that Nelly had repeatedly \u201cmanipulated\u201d them into falsely thinking they\u2019d be paid for their work on the 2000 album, which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200. But they said he never made good on the promises.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery time plaintiffs confronted defendant Haynes [he] would assure them as \u2018friends\u2019 he would never prevent them from receiving the financial success they were entitled to,\u201d the lawsuit reads. \u201cUnfortunately, plaintiffs, reasonably believing that their friend and former band member would never steal credit for writing the original compositions, did not initially pursue any legal remedies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring and after the Country Grammar <\/em>recording session, the lawsuit claimed, Nelly \u201cprivately and publicly acknowledged that plaintiffs were the lyric writers\u201d and \u201cpromised to ensure that plaintiffs received writing and publishing credit.\u201d But decades later, in 2020, the lawsuit claimed that the St. Lunatics \u201cdiscovered that defendant Haynes had been lying to them the entire time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDespite repeatedly promising plaintiffs that they would receive full recognition and credit\u2026 it eventually became clear that defendant Haynes had no intention of providing the plaintiffs with any such credit or recognition,\u201d the lawsuit read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weeks after Nelly\u2019s former St. Lunatics groupmates sued him for allegedly cutting them out of royalties for his chart-topping breakout album Country Grammar, three of the ex-bandmates now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3749,3748,2949,303],"class_list":["post-2928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-approve","tag-bandmates","tag-didnt","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928","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=2928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}