{"id":5416,"date":"2025-04-22T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T20:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-trial-lil-durk-case-drake-umg-lawsuit-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T20:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T20:03:00","slug":"diddy-trial-lil-durk-case-drake-umg-lawsuit-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-trial-lil-durk-case-drake-umg-lawsuit-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Diddy Trial, Lil Durk Case, Drake-UMG Lawsuit & More Music 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: A breakdown of the many lawyers working on the Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs litigation; a motion by Lil Durk to dismiss his federal murder-for-hire charges; an updated version of Drake\u2019s lawsuit against Universal Music Group focused on the Super Bowl; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: The Diddy Debacle\u2019s Many, Many Lawyers\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tTo lead off Billboard<\/em>\u2019s annual Top Music Lawyers list, I dove deep into the many attorneys involved in the litigation against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs over his alleged sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpread across a complex criminal case and dozens of civil lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions, the Combs litigation unsurprisingly involves a slew of high-powered lawyers, ranging from veteran defense attorneys to experienced sex-crimes prosecutors to a prolific plaintiff\u2019s lawyer who says he represents more than 100 victims. And that\u2019s not even mentioning the BigLaw attorneys hired to defend top industry players who have been dragged \u2014 they say wrongly \u2014 into the messy litigation.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the whole story, which covers more than 20 lawyers in all, go read my full article here. And make sure not to miss the actual Top Lawyers list after that, detailing the top music industry attorneys who are making deals, guiding clients and watching out for AI.<\/p>\n

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

\n\tIF THE SONG DOESN\u2019T FIT <\/strong>\u2013 Lil Durk asked a federal judge to dismiss murder-for-hire charges, claiming prosecutors are citing song lyrics as evidence even though he wrote them more than six months before the alleged crime. Prosecutors had claimed last year that the Chicago drill star rapped about ordering his \u201cOTF\u201d crew to murder rival Quando Rondo, but his lawyers said last week that the claim was \u201cdemonstrably false\u201d and that the feds used such evidence to mislead a grand jury: \u201cUnless the government is prosecuting Banks on a theory of extra-sensory prescience, the lyrics could not have soundly informed the grand jury\u2019s finding of probable cause,\u201d Durks lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tDRAKE v. UMG UPDATE<\/strong> \u2013 Drake filed an amended complaint in his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d focusing heavily on the Super Bowl halftime show that took place after the original case was filed. Drake\u2019s lawyers said the decision to censor the word \u201cpedophile\u201d during the broadcast had actually helped his case: \u201cKendrick Lamar would not have been permitted to perform during the Super Bowl Performance unless the word \u2018pedophile\u2019\u2026 was omitted from the lyrics \u2014 that is because nearly everyone understands that it is defamatory to falsely brand someone a \u2018certified pedophile\u2019,\u201d the star\u2019s lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tLEGAL R.I.P.<\/strong> \u2013 Music attorney Joel Katz<\/strong>, for decades one of the industry\u2019s most powerful figures, died last week at the age of 80. A longtime practice group chair at the firm Greenberg Traurig, Katz represented a who\u2019s who of top music executives over his career, as well as major artists (Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Tim McGraw) and industry groups (Recording Academy and Country Music Association). After Recording Academy head Deb Dugan<\/strong> accused Katz of sexual harassment in 2020 \u2014 an allegation he denied \u2014 he joined Barnes & Thornburg in 2021, where he spent the rest of his career. Go read Melinda Newman\u2019s full obituary here, featuring reactions from around the industry.<\/p>\n

\n\tDIDDY TRIAL DELAY DENIED<\/strong> \u2013 Judge Arun Subramanian denied a request by Diddy to delay his sex trafficking and racketeering trial by two months, ruling that the move was made too close to trial. The star\u2019s lawyers had argued they didn\u2019t have enough time to prepare for trial after prosecutors added new charges earlier this month. But the judge ruled that the new indictment largely overlapped with earlier charging papers, telling Diddy\u2019s lawyers he found it \u201cunclear why there isn\u2019t sufficient time to prepare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSMOKING GUN OR \u2018UNRELIABLE\u2019?<\/strong> \u2013 Elsewhere in Diddy-world, his lawyers asked the judge to exclude the infamous 2016 surveillance video of him assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura from the trial, arguing it would \u201cunfairly confuse and mislead the jury.\u201d They claimed the clip was edited by CNN and then the original was destroyed, leaving only an \u201cinaccurate, unreliable video\u201d to play for jurors: \u201cThe manipulation of the videos was specifically designed to inflame the passions of CNN\u2019s viewing audience, and that is what the government is hoping to leverage in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDISASTER DEPOSITION<\/strong> \u2013 Megan Thee Stallion asked a federal judge to hold Tory Lanez in contempt of court over \u201cdisruptive\u201d and \u201cinflammatory\u201d behavior during a recent deposition in a civil lawsuit. Her lawyers said Lanez \u2014 currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for shooting Megan \u2014 made a \u201cmockery of the proceedings\u201d by harassing a female lawyer and demanding definitions of basic terms. The motion came in a defamation case Megan filed last year against gossip blogger Milagro Gramz, who she claims has waged a \u201ccoordinated campaign\u201d with Lanez to \u201cdefame and delegitimize\u201d the superstar rapper in the wake of the shooting and trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tDANCE DANCE LITIGATION<\/strong> \u2013 A TikTok user named Kelley Heyer, who says she created last summer\u2019s viral \u201cApple dance\u201d to a Charli XCX song, is suing Roblox over allegations that the company violated copyright law by selling her dance moves as an \u201cemote.\u201d Heyer claims that other games paid her for a license, but that Roblox used her moves without a deal. The lawsuit is the latest in a long line of cases filed over viral dance moves that are used in video games.<\/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":5417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,296,5607,3891,153,303,1916,593,310,342],"class_list":["post-5416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-diddy","tag-drakeumg","tag-durk","tag-law","tag-lawsuit","tag-lil","tag-music","tag-news","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416","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=5416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}