Taylor Swift Deposition Drama, Neil Young Lawsuit, Lil Durk Trial Delay & More Top Music Law News

THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift was erstwhile again dragged into the never-ending ineligible warfare betwixt Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni implicit the movie It Ends With Us — with a confusing back-and-forth implicit whether the superstar was going to beryllium deposed.

Baldoni has been claiming for months that Swift’s relationship with Lively makes her a cardinal witnesser successful the disfigured case, successful which Lively alleges Baldoni sexually harassed her and past orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign. In June, a justice granted him entree to Swift and Lively’s substance messages arsenic portion of the papers find process.

Now, Baldoni wants to depose Swift. In a tribunal filing past week, his lawyers claimed the superstar had “agreed to look for deposition” aft her docket opened up adjacent month. But Swift’s attorneys rapidly said that wasn’t what had really happened.

“My lawsuit did not hold to a deposition,” Swift’s lawyer wrote. “But if she is forced into a deposition, we advised (after archetypal proceeding astir the deposition conscionable 3 days ago) that her docket would accommodate the clip required during the week of October 20.”

As is truthful often the lawsuit successful the frenetic Baldoni-Lively spectacle, it was each implicit quickly: A justice denied Baldoni’s petition for peculiar accommodation to depose Swift. To recognize why, go work the afloat communicative here, featuring entree to the judge’s afloat written ruling.

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Other apical stories this week…

TORT OF GOLD – Neil Young was hit with a lawsuit implicit the sanction of his caller backing band, called The Chrome Hearts, filed by a manner marque that has utilized the aforesaid sanction for decades. The luxury apparel institution says the stone legend’s caller sanction — helium usually tours and records with different radical called Crazy Horse — intelligibly infringes its trademark rights to the name.

A “MEASLY” DEAL – A people enactment colony for songwriters that netted their lawyers a acold larger payout is officially history. The 2019 deal, which secured a full of $53,000 for songwriters but paid their lawyers a whopping $1.7 million, was struck down successful 2023 by an appeals tribunal that said the ruling near them successful “disbelief.” Following that slapdown, a little justice heeded the warning this week: He awarded the lawyers conscionable $86,022.

DUA LIPA MERCH – Sony merchandise task Ceremony of Roses sued to halt bootleggers from selling knockoff Dua Lipa merch during her Radical Optimism tour — the latest successful a caller spate of anti-counterfeiting lawsuits brought by authoritative merch retailers.

LIL NAS X IN REHAB – Weeks aft the prima was arrested and deed with felony charges for allegedly attacking constabulary officers and resisting apprehension portion wandering bare successful Los Angeles, a justice said Lil Nas had entered an inpatient attraction program: “We’re not going to get circumstantial astir wherever helium is,” the justice said astatine a tribunal hearing: “It’s private, cipher needs to cognize wherever helium is, but helium is successful treatment.”

DURK TRIAL DELAY – Lil Durk’s proceedings connected national murder-for-hire charges might beryllium postponed from October to January, aft prosecutors and respective of his co-defendants agreed to the change. Durk himself didn’t consent to the delay, but prosecutors argued that a three-month hold won’t interruption his law close to a speedy trial. Stay tuned.

“COMPLETE BOONDOGGLE” – Calvin Harris took ineligible action against his longtime fiscal advisor Thomas St. John, claiming that helium duped him into investing $22.5 ...