{"id":4060,"date":"2025-02-06T16:11:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T16:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/jimi-hendrix-lawsuit-heads-to-trial-after-uk-court-rejects-sony-appeal\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T16:11:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T16:11:01","slug":"jimi-hendrix-lawsuit-heads-to-trial-after-uk-court-rejects-sony-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/jimi-hendrix-lawsuit-heads-to-trial-after-uk-court-rejects-sony-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimi Hendrix Lawsuit Heads To Trial After UK Court Rejects Sony Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA long-running legal battle over the rights to Jimi Hendrix<\/a>\u2019s music is going to trial after a U.K. appeals court rejected Sony Music\u2019s bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by his former bandmates.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe estates of bassist Noel Redding<\/strong> and drummer Mitch Mitchell<\/strong> say they own a share of the rights to three albums created by the trio\u2019s Jimi Hendrix Experience, and they\u2019ve been battling in court with Sony and Experience Hendrix LLC for more than three years to prove it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling Thursday, the U.K.\u2019s Court of Appeal upheld a decision issued last year that said the dispute must be decided at trial, rejecting Sony\u2019s request to overturn that ruling and dismiss the case: \u201cIn my judgment the judge was correct,\u201d Lord Justice Richard Arnold<\/strong> wrote in the new ruling, obtained by Billboard<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement celebrating that ruling, a rep for Redding and Mitchell\u2019s heirs say that their case is now scheduled to proceed to trial in December \u2013 more than four years after they first sued.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNoel and Mitch first issued their complaint in November 2021 and after the latest delaying tactic of Sony to deny them justice the case now moves to a full trial,\u201d said Edward Adams, a director for the heirs. \u201cWe retain our faith in the justice system that they and [Experience Hendrix] will be finally held fully to account at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesperson for Sony did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.<\/p>\n

\n\tHendrix teamed up with Redding and Mitchell in 1966 to form the Experience, and the trio went on to release a number of now-iconic songs including \u201cAll Along The Watchtower,\u201d which spent nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 and peaked at No. 20. The group split up in 1969, a little over a year before Hendrix died suddenly at the age of 27 from an accidental drug overdose.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe current fight kicked off in 2021, when Redding and Mitchell\u2019s heirs sent a letter in the U.K. claiming they own a stake in Hendrix\u2019s music and arguing that they\u2019re owed millions in royalties.<\/p>\n

\n\tExperience Hendrix, a company that owns his intellectual property, and Sony, which distributes his music under a licensing deal, responded a month later by preemptively suing in New York federal court, aiming to disprove those allegations. Redding and Mitchell\u2019s heirs then filed their own case against Sony in British court, seeking control of the records and accusing the label of copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter months of jockeying, a U.S. federal judge ruled in 2023 that the English litigation could take precedence.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeeking to end that lawsuit, Sony argued that Redding and Mitchell both signed away their rights shortly after Hendrix died. In a 1973 legal settlement cited by Sony, the two men purportedly agreed not to sue Jimi\u2019s estate and any record companies distributing his music in return for one-time payments \u2014 $100,000 paid to Redding and $247,500 to Mitchell.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut last year, a judge on London\u2019s High Court ruled that the dispute \u2013 over \u201carguably the greatest rock guitarist ever\u201d \u2014 was close enough that it would need to be decided at trial.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy overall conclusion is that the claims in respect of copyright and performers\u2019 property rights survive and should go to trial,\u201d Justice Michael Green<\/strong> wrote at the time. The judge wrote that Redding and Mitchell\u2019s heirs had \u201ca real prospect of succeeding\u201d on their argument that the decades-old releases \u201cdo not provide a complete defence\u201d for Sony.<\/p>\n

\n\tSony appealed that ruling, setting the stage for Thursday\u2019s decision. In doing so, the company didn\u2019t actually challenge judge\u2019s ruling on the core issue of the 1973 settlement; instead, Sony\u2019s lawyers argued that Redding and Mitchell\u2019s heirs were ineligible to file their case under various U.K. statutes.<\/p>\n

\n\tJoined by two other appellate judges on the panel, Lord Justice Arnold rejected those arguments on Thursday, ruling that the heirs\u2019 claims were fair game under the statutes cited by Sony.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s unclear if Sony will file further appeals, or whether such additional challenges might delay the trial beyond December. Such rulings can typically be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the country\u2019s highest appeals court; but like the U.S. Supreme Court, the British top court only accepts a limited number of cases, based on whether they raise big and important legal questions.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the case does proceed to trial, attorneys for the Redding and Mitchell estates said Thursday that they were looking forward to the showdown. In the statement, they compared their late clients to the Freddie Mercury\u2019s bandmates in Queen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo one is denying that Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest guitarists of all time, just as Freddie Mercury was a great singer. But neither of them made their recordings alone,\u201d said Lawrence Abramson<\/strong> of the law firm Keystone Law. \u201cIt has never been suggested that Brian May, John Deacon nor Roger Taylor should not have participated in Queen\u2019s success so why should Noel and Mitch lose out from the success of the Jimi Hendrix Experience?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long-running legal battle over the rights to Jimi Hendrix\u2019s music is going to trial after a U.K. appeals court rejected Sony Music\u2019s bid to dismiss a lawsuit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[366,143,2689,4553,4552,303,697,1840,342],"class_list":["post-4060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-appeal","tag-court","tag-heads","tag-hendrix","tag-jimi","tag-lawsuit","tag-rejects","tag-sony","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060","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=4060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}