{"id":7482,"date":"2025-08-23T03:01:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-settles-writing-credit-lawsuit-right-before-trial\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T03:01:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T03:01:17","slug":"missy-elliott-settles-writing-credit-lawsuit-right-before-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-settles-writing-credit-lawsuit-right-before-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Missy Elliott Settles Writing Credit Lawsuit Right Before Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tM<\/span>issy Elliot has reached a settlement with a music producer who claims to have co-written several of her songs from the 1990s, resolving the nearly seven-year-old dispute just as a trial was about to begin.<\/p>\n

\n\tLaw360<\/a><\/em> and Courthouse News Service<\/a> <\/em>both reported on Friday (Aug. 22) that Elliott\u2019s lawyers and Terry Williams, who\u2019s representing himself, arrived at a settlement in a Philadelphia federal courtroom just minutes before they were set to start selecting a jury for their copyright trial.<\/p>\n

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\n\tDetails of the settlement were not immediately available, and neither Elliott\u2019s attorneys nor Williams returned Billboard<\/em>\u2019s request for comment on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit, which has been making its way through the court system since 2018, centers on the R&B girl group Sista, where Elliott got her start before breaking out as a solo artist in the late \u201990s.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams, a music producer who once owned a Philadelphia recording studio, claims he and Elliott co-wrote four songs off Sista\u2019s 1994 album 4 All the Sistas Around da World<\/em>: \u201cSweat You Down,\u201d \u201cSecret Admirer,\u201d \u201cI Wanna Know\u201d and \u201cI Wanna Be with U.\u201d He alleged that Elliott unfairly left him off the songwriting credits, and was seeking through the lawsuit to get royalties dating back to the 1994 album release.<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott, meanwhile, maintained throughout the case that Williams \u201cdid not write a single lyric or in any manner contribute to any of the songs\u201d off 4 All the Sistas Around da World<\/em>. Elliott said she did not even meet Williams until after she\u2019d delivered the album to Elektra Records.<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Nitza I. Qui\u00f1ones Alejandro ruled last year that due to these conflicting narratives, the lawsuit could only be resolved by a jury weighing the evidence and deciding who to believe. But the judge threw out an additional claim from Williams that alleged he and Elliott also co-wrote the 1996 Aaliyah song \u201cHeartbroken,\u201d saying this part of the case was barred by the statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams\u2019 lawsuit also targeted Timbaland, who produced 4 All the Sistas Around da World<\/em>, as well as Elektra, Atlantic Records, Warner Music Group and Reservoir Media. Those claims were all paused until the outcome of the Elliott trial, and they still remain pending.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missy Elliot has reached a settlement with a music producer who claims to have co-written several of her songs from the 1990s, resolving the nearly seven-year-old dispute just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4759,3199,303,3198,322,342,168],"class_list":["post-7482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-credit","tag-elliott","tag-lawsuit","tag-missy","tag-settles","tag-trial","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7482","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=7482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}