{"id":5583,"date":"2025-05-01T18:27:45","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sam-smith-dancing-with-a-stranger-lawsuit-revived-by-appeals-court\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T18:27:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:27:45","slug":"sam-smith-dancing-with-a-stranger-lawsuit-revived-by-appeals-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/sam-smith-dancing-with-a-stranger-lawsuit-revived-by-appeals-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Smith ‘Dancing With A Stranger’ Lawsuit Revived By Appeals Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit claiming Sam Smith<\/a> and Normani<\/a> stole key elements of their 2019 hit \u201cDancing With a Stranger\u201d from an earlier track, ruling that the case was tossed out too soon and should have been decided by a jury trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reversed a 2023 ruling by a lower judge that had dismissed the case \u2013 a copyright lawsuit claiming Smith and Normani ripped off a little-known earlier song called \u201cDancing with Strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, the trial judge said the two songs were simply not similar enough to constitute copyright infringement. But in a ruling Tuesday, the appeals court said a jury of their peers might have decided the case differently if they\u2019d been given the chance.<\/p>\n

\n\tA \u201creasonable jury\u201d could potentially decide that the hooks of the two tracks share the same combination of musical elements \u201cin substantial amounts,\u201d the appeals court wrote, including lyrics, \u201cmetric placement\u201d and the same \u201cmelodic contour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the two songs also have key differences, the appeals court said a trial judge cannot simply pick a winner if there are conflicting reports from musical experts: \u201cUnder that approach, expert testimony would not be required at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling is a loss for Smith and Normani, but is also a worrying decision for any artist hit with a song-theft copyright lawsuit. If such cases must be litigated all the way to trial to be decided, they become dramatically more expensive for defendants, and give accusers more leverage to secure settlements from artists wary of protracted litigation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em>, A.J. Fluehr of Francis Alexander LLC, lead counsel for Smith\u2019s accusers, praised the court for \u201cprotecting songwriters\u201d and said that he and his clients \u201clook forward to our day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor too long the industry has used disingenuous legal arguments to create bad law that has negatively impacted the creatives,\u201d Fluehr said. \u201cThe [plaintiffs] are gratified that the Ninth Circuit carefully listened to the songs, looked at the evidence, heard oral argument, and swiftly concluded that the central issue in this case must go to a jury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Smith and Normani did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tReleased in 2019, \u201cDancing with a Stranger\u201d peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100 chart, making it one of Smith\u2019s biggest hits and Normani\u2019s peak spot on the chart. The song, released on Smith\u2019s third studio album Love Goes<\/em>, ultimately spent 45 weeks on the chart.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March 2022, the two artists were sued over the track by songwriters Jordan Vincent,<\/strong> Christopher Miranda<\/strong> and Rosco Banlaoi<\/strong>, who claimed that the 2019 hit song was \u201cstrikingly similar\u201d to their own \u201cDancing\u201d \u2014 and that it was \u201cbeyond any real doubt\u201d that their song had been copied.<\/p>\n

\n\tA year later, the case was dismissed by Judge Wesley L. Hsu<\/strong>, who ruled that the two songs were not \u201csubstantially similar\u201d \u2013 the legal threshold for proving copyright infringement. He granted Smith and Normani summary judgment, meaning he ended the case without a trial because he believed a jury could not validly side with the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Tuesday\u2019s decision, the Ninth Circuit overturned that ruling, saying that so long as there is \u201csufficient disagreement\u201d among the musicologists retained by each side, then case \u201cmust be submitted\u201d to a jury.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling will send the case back to Judge Hsu for more litigation, including a potential jury trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit claiming Sam Smith and Normani stole key elements of their 2019 hit \u201cDancing With a Stranger\u201d from an earlier track, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[782,143,5758,303,431,789,540,5759],"class_list":["post-5583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-appeals","tag-court","tag-dancing","tag-lawsuit","tag-revived","tag-sam","tag-smith","tag-stranger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583","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=5583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}