{"id":7516,"date":"2025-08-26T09:16:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-settles-lawsuit-from-alleged-co-writer-just-before-trial\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T09:16:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:16:02","slug":"missy-elliott-settles-lawsuit-from-alleged-co-writer-just-before-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-settles-lawsuit-from-alleged-co-writer-just-before-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Missy Elliott Settles Lawsuit From Alleged Co-Writer Just Before Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tMissy Elliott has reached a settlement with a music producer who claimed to have co-written several of her songs from the 1990s, ending a long-running legal dispute just as a jury trial was about to begin.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe agreement, struck Friday (Aug. 22) in a Philadelphia federal courtroom, will end a lawsuit filed by Terry Williams<\/strong>, who claims he and Elliott collaborated on numerous songs in the 1990s but that she refused to credit him as a co-writer.<\/p>\n

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\n\tTerms of the deal were not disclosed in court filings, but Elliott\u2019s attorney Mike Trauben<\/strong> shared details with Billboard<\/em>. \u201cNo money was paid in connection with any of Terry Williams\u2019 claims, the last remnants of which were dismissed,\u201d Trauben said in an email.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrauben said a \u201csmall sum\u201d had been paid to purchase beats created by Williams that were used in songs otherwise created and owned by Elliott. \u201cMissy\u2019s writings in her notebooks were returned back to her,\u201d Trauben said, \u201calong with all her music that he had in storage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams did not return a 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 1990s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams, a music producer who once owned a Philadelphia recording studio, claimed that he and Elliott co-wrote four songs off Sista\u2019s 1994 album 4 All the Sistas Around da World<\/em>. He alleged that Elliott unfairly left him off the songwriting credits, and was seeking through the lawsuit to get back royalties stretching to the 1994 album release.\u00a0<\/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

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\n\tJudge Nitza I. Qui\u00f1ones Alejandro<\/strong> 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 Elliott has reached a settlement with a music producer who claimed to have co-written several of her songs from the 1990s, ending a long-running legal dispute just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[460,6686,3199,303,3198,322,342],"class_list":["post-7516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-alleged","tag-cowriter","tag-elliott","tag-lawsuit","tag-missy","tag-settles","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516","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=7516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}