{"id":8225,"date":"2025-10-18T15:42:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T15:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lil-wayne-wins-legal-victory-in-ex-lawyers-20m-fee-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:24:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:24:53","slug":"lil-wayne-wins-legal-victory-in-ex-lawyers-20m-fee-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lil-wayne-wins-legal-victory-in-ex-lawyers-20m-fee-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lil Wayne Wins Legal Victory in Ex-Lawyer’s $20M Fee Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tLil Wayne has scored a major victory in a long-running legal battle over whether he owed millions in fees to his former attorney.<\/p>\n

\n\tWayne (Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.) and lawyer Ron Sweeney<\/strong> have been facing off against each other in court for more than seven years over the status of a contingency fee arrangement, which originally entitled Sweeney to 10% of Wayne\u2019s profits.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe rapper first sued in 2019, claiming the 10% fee was an \u201cexorbitant\u201d amount that\u2019s \u201cdouble the customary rate for attorneys in the music industry.\u201d Wayne said that because the agreement was verbal only and never signed, it became void as soon as he fired Sweeney in 2018.<\/p>\n

\n\tSweeney countersued Wayne, first in California and later in New York, claiming the fee should be enforced. The lawyer said he was due $20 million from deals that went through after his termination, including Wayne\u2019s confidential royalty settlement with Cash Money Records and an alleged sale of Young Money master recordings to Universal Music Group (UMG).<\/p>\n

\n\tA New York judge sided with Wayne on Tuesday (Oct. 14), ruling that Sweeney isn\u2019t owed 10% on any money that came through after he was fired.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCounterclaim plaintiffs may not, under [the law], receive a contingency fee, as contemplated by the voided oral contingency fee arrangement or otherwise,\u201d wrote Judge James D\u2019Auguste. \u201cAccordingly, they are not entitled to discovery regarding the monies received by Carter in connection with the master recordings sale and Cash Money\/Universal settlements.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tAccording to the judge, Sweeney can only pursue \u201creasonable fees\u201d from Wayne. The question of what constitutes reasonable fees will now move forward into evidence discovery, with Sweeney still seeking many millions. Wayne maintains that Sweeney is owed nothing because the lawyer was actually overpaid during their 13 years working together.<\/p>\n

\n\tWayne\u2019s attorney, Jonathan Davis<\/strong>, celebrated the ruling in a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Thursday (Oct. 16).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter an almost seven-year battle in multiple courts in New York and California, lawyers can rest a little easier in knowing that the rule of law still matters and will be applied faithfully by courts,\u201d said Davis. \u201cMr. Carter is thankful to Justice d\u2019Auguste for his significant decision against Ron Sweeney and his company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Sweeney did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\"Billboard<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lil Wayne has scored a major victory in a long-running legal battle over whether he owed millions in fees to his former attorney. Wayne (Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3980,6905,717,303,136,1916,3873,6057,882],"class_list":["post-8225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-20m","tag-exlawyers","tag-fee","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal","tag-lil","tag-victory","tag-wayne","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225","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=8225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8229,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8225\/revisions\/8229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}