{"id":8468,"date":"2025-11-06T20:28:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/what-will-he-argue-to-revive-not-like-us-case\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T20:28:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:28:24","slug":"what-will-he-argue-to-revive-not-like-us-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/what-will-he-argue-to-revive-not-like-us-case\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will He Argue To Revive ‘Not Like Us’ Case?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tDrake is appealing after a judge dismissed his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d \u2014 and some legal experts think it could be a closer case than one might expect.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe appeal, filed last week, will seek to revive Drake\u2019s case, which claimed that UMG defamed him by releasing lyrics that called him a \u201ccertified pedophile.\u201d A judge tossed the case out last month, ruling that listeners would think Lamar was just lobbing hyperbolic opinions, not hard facts.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many casual observers, the reaction to Drake\u2019s decision to appeal was some version of the law of holes: If find yourself in one, stop digging.<\/em> After taking a reputational hit from filing a lawsuit during a rap beef, and then quickly losing that case in court, why drag it out any further?<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause, some legal experts say, a court of appeal might be more open to siding with Drake than the court of public opinion. \u201cI think there\u2019s actually a good argument that \u2018pedophile\u2019 wasn\u2019t meant metaphorically here,\u201d says Benjamin C. Zipursky<\/strong>, a professor at Fordham Law School and an expert in defamation law.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of Judge Jeannette A. Vargas<\/strong>\u2018 ruling against Drake turned on context<\/em> \u2014 that Kendrick\u2019s lyrics came amid a \u201cwar of words\u201d in which fans had seen repeated \u201cinflammatory insults\u201d from each side. In that setting, and within the art form of battle rap more generally, the judge said listeners would likely view the pedophile line as just one more \u201chyperbolic vituperation\u201d rather than the kind of \u201csober facts\u201d that could be proven true or false.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn appeal, Drake\u2019s lawyers are likely to argue that Vargas got lost in that context-heavy approach and missed the actual reality of the case: That even if it came during a diss track, Kendrick accused Drake of a very specific type of wrongdoing. And some experts say that might gain traction at an appeals court.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIs that a verifiable statement? Of course it is,\u201d Zipursky says. \u201cAs opposed to calling somebody a \u2018fascist\u2019 or a \u2018sh-thead\u2019 or claiming they don\u2019t love their family, the statement that \u2018X is a pedophile\u2019 falls more on the verifiable, falsifiable side. And that\u2019s clearly what Drake\u2019s lawyers are going to push.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZipursky stresses that Vargas had done an \u201cartful\u201d job crafting her ruling, taking into account layers of legal precedent and serious concerns about a chilling effect on free expression from letting a rich celebrity sue over art. But when dealing with the almost metaphysical complexity of speech law, he says an appeals court might still see things differently.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cIf I were Drake\u2019s lawyers, I would absolutely try to pull apart some of these context issues,\u201d Zipursky says. \u201cI\u2019d ask why it\u2019s fine for rap musicians to tell lies about each other\u2019s criminality when there\u2019s nothing in New York law that says that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother way for Drake\u2019s lawyers to frame those issues could be to argue the case was simply tossed too soon. Judge Vargas dismissed the case on a so-called motion to dismiss \u2014 meaning at the earliest possible stage of a case. Under that rule, she said that even if Drake proved all his lawsuit\u2019s defamation allegations were factually true<\/em>, he still couldn\u2019t win the case because the law itself<\/em> was against him.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Marina V. Bogorad<\/strong>, a veteran entertainment litigator at Munck Wilson Mandala LLP, that ruling smacks of blanket immunity for any<\/em> statement made in the context of a diss track, even an accusation of heinous conduct that would obviously be defamatory if false.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe statement on its face accuses Drake of a serious crime,\u201d Bogorad says. \u201cTo find that you can lace rap songs with facially libelous statements with impunity as a matter of law is quite a holding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, none of this means Drake\u2019s appeal is a slam dunk. Other legal experts had predicted to Billboard<\/em> that the case would be dismissed for exactly the reasons later cited by Judge Vargas. And scholars versed in hip hop also came out against the case, arguing that Drake\u2019s effort to treat rap lyrics literally was both legally faulty and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut reasonable legal minds can differ on something as complicated and nuanced as free speech and defamation \u2014 and Bogorad says the appeals courts might think Judge Vargas should have waited and allowed more discovery into the facts of the case, including into the falsity of the claim or how actual listeners understood Kendrick\u2019s lyrics.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhether or not someone is a \u2018certified pedophile\u2019 is certainly a fact capable of being disproved,\u201d Bogorad says. \u201cIt remains a question for the [appeals court] whether rappers have an instant immunity from these kinds of inquiries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drake is appealing after a judge dismissed his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d \u2014 and some legal experts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3192,294,4559],"class_list":["post-8468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-argue","tag-case","tag-revive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8468","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=8468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}