California judge reverses Quincy Jones' $9.4 million win in Michael Jackson royalties suit
Aux Features Music
At the risk of saying something profoundly controversial: It seems like contract law is very complicated and designed in such a way that the complexity is more of a feature than a bug, with someone’s ability to get what they want out of a contract having more to do with how well they can argue about it than the actual text of the thing. Anyway, this is on our minds because a judge in California has decided to reverse a 2017 decision by a Los Angeles jury to award music producer Quincy Jones $9.42 million in damages because of unpaid royalties he said he was owed by the Michael Jackson estate (via The Hollywood Reporter).
According to an appeals court judge, the previous trial judge did not “adequately interpret” the contracts between Jones and Jackson, and the case probably didn’t even need to go to a jury in the first place. Instead, the judge should’ve “looked at extrinsic evidence about the contract to make a preliminary determination” and then decided whether or not there were “at least two interpretations” and “enough conflict” to justify getting a jury involved, which the appeals judge did not believe there was. Basically, it sounds like the appeals judge said there was enough information in the contracts themselves to decide what to do, so the appeals court looked at them and figured that a big chunk of the $9.42 million was unnecessary and that the decision should be reversed. The court decided that Jones was still owed some royalties, but not to the extent that the initial jury had determined, so now it’s going back to the trial judge who will “sharply slash the award” that had previously been given to Jones.
So it’s all pretty complicated, but the simple version is that one judge thinks the other judge did a bad job reading the contract and made the wrong decision, so Quincy Jones is going to get less money from the Michael Jackson estate than he was supposed to get before.
24 Comments
How dare you take money from poor Blanket!
How dare you take money from poor rich Blanket!
Oh sure. He has money, but he’s poor of spirit. You try going through life with a blanket over your face and see how you feel.
Bigi, his current nickname, is doing just fine.
We live in a world these days of hyper-corrupt Republican appointed court judges who are overtly on the side of the malefactors.
This was a state court.Also, this is a fight between two rich guys (or, rather, one rich guy and one rich estate), there’s no reason why, even if this was a court of conservative judges, they’d favour one over the other.
What are you talking about? What malefactors? Quincy Jones is a vulture he was already paid plenty but he wanted more that was not warranted under the contract.
We live in a world where anyone can sue a dead guy for things he didn’t do and make lots of money with it because sites like this kiss their ass and even refuse to read the actual court filings.
My experience with contracts:“This clause here is unreasonable. Take it out. I’m not assuming that risk for you.”“Oh, that’s just standard language. Everybody else has agrees to it. We would NEVER do that.”“OK. If you would NEVER do it, then you shouldn’t have any problem taking it out.”“No, we need to leave it in.”
Then what happened your case? I’m assuming you turned them down.
It was a negotiation that went on longer than necessary.
That’s when phrases like, “In good faith” start appearing.
“Quincy Jones is going to get less money from the Michael Jackson estate than he was supposed to get before”The article reads as though Quincy Jones is now going to get the amount he was supposed to get.
You’re cutting my inheritance!
That elegant tropical fish Ann Perkins needs assistance from no man.
Jackson Estate to Quincy Jones: Hee-Hee (grabs crotch)!
I have friend that does does contract and IP law. The stuff that companies try to sneak in is ridiculous. Even stuff that is SOP is bonkers.
Sometimes it isn’t even what’s in the contract, but where it was signed/enforced that matters more as different states have different laws or interpretations of the law. So filing a suit in Cali can yield a wildly different result than filing the same suit in Kentucky, and corporations will file where ever it best serves their interests.
Sh-mon.
Because he’s bad, ya know it.
Contract law, like most law, is fundamentally an attempt to turn common-sense notions of fairness into specific policies to help resolve disputes. However, people always disagree about what precisely those common sense notions are, or precisely how small details should factor into the decisions – so, over the course of a couple centuries, it has evolved into a complex series of (sometimes conflicting) priorities and procedures which, while they maintain some general internal logic, are often indecipherable to anyone who doesn’t spend years studying their intricacies. And, of course, lobbying and badly-chosen judges can fuck things up. The fundamental goal of fairness remains, however.
Think of it like medicine – the basic goal is to get you healthy, but there are disagreements over exactly what that means, or how best to get there, or whether certain medications are helpful or harmful, etc, and a bad doctor can easily kill you – but still, medicine is there to get you better, once you filter through all the bullshit. In both cases, you can certainly question the specifics, but assuming that the entire enterprise is inherently corrupt or intentionally unfair is a fundamental misunderstanding.
In other words, Sam, the snarky cynicism only really works if it isn’t paired with ignorance.
-a friendly neighborhood lawyer (who works in a non-contract/IP field)
That judge knows there’s no such thing as a Sanity Clause !
Sounds to me like Jackson’s estate initially motioned for a Directed Verdict. Basically, sometimes the facts of a case, especially in contact law, are obvious enough that a judge can be convinced that any reasonable jury would come to the same conclusion, and the judge can then decide the case on the spot. This motion was denied in the first trial, and obviously when it went to a jury, Jackson’s estate lost. BUT, when you appeal a case you can also refile any motions that were denied the first time, and THIS time, the judge was convinced that the contract, as written, was inarguable, and any reasonable jury would have sided with Jackson’s estate. It doesn’t actually matter that a jury already sided against Jackson, the Directed Verdict basically implies that the jury was stupid and wrong.
Sserious question… Michael Jackson died asset rich but cash poor. Wasn’t he deeply in debt at the time? I assume a significant portion of his estate needed to be liquidated to pay his creditors, and of course, the IRS probably took their large chunk. How much of that estate could remain today? I imagine a sort of modern-day Jarndice vs Jarndice.Maybe if the estate still owned the Sony music catalog, it would still generate a significant amount of cash, but I seem to recall they sold either all or most of it… but I could be wrong on that point.