Cameo Clips

A former band member's suit based on breach of the group's shareholder agreement should be transferred to New Jersey federal district court, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled. Connors v. UUU Productions Inc., 03-6420. Plaintiff Peter Connors had formed the rock band UUU with the defendants. He later claimed that under an oral agreement, the band was obligated to purchase shares of leaving members. Connors brought suit alleging that, after he announced he was resigning from UUU, the defendants wasted UUU assets to diminish the value of Connors' shares. Connors, who lived in Pennsylvania, filed his complaint in Montgomery County, PA. The defendants removed the case to federal court. The district court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss but granted their motion to transfer to New Jersey, where UUU was incorporated and had its principal place of business. Connors contended, among other things, that 91% of the band's performances over the prior year were in Pennsylvania. But the district court noted that, “all of the facts relating to the adoption of the shareholders' agreement that is the basis for plaintiff's breach of contract claim occurred in New Jersey. … In addition, some of the events that are relevant to the breach of the shareholders' agreement occurred in New Jersey ' the shareholders' meeting during which defendants Saltalamacchia and Mackie decided not to buy plaintiff's shares of UUU occurred in New Jersey. Given that defendants Mackie and Saltalamacchia are both New Jersey residents and UUU's corporate bank and investment account are also maintained in New Jersey, any wasting of corporate assets … occurred, in whole or in part, in that state.” The district court further noted on a defamation allegation Connor had included in his suit, “Although Pennsylvania law may apply to the defamation claim, this factor is given little weight because this claim does not involve a complex question of Pennsylvania law.”

Pennsylvania's 4-year statute of limitations for a quantum merit claim in a suit over alleged rights in a recording contract wasn't revived when artist Will Smith gave what he argued was a monetary gift to a former member of his group, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided in an unpublished opinion. Holmes v. Smith, 03-1171. Smith had signed a recording contract with Word-Up Enterprises in 1986. Plaintiff Clarence Holmes, who performed as “Ready Rock C” with Smith's group DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, contended that Smith promised to make Holmes an equal member with a right to one-third of the group's contract income. Holmes left DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince in 1990. Upon seeing Smith in 1997, he told his former bandmate that he was in financial straits. During 1997 and 1998, Smith wrote checks to Holmes that amounted to $26,000. In 1999, Holmes filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claiming that the payments had been for his right to group income and had restarted the statute of limitations for a claim of quantum meruit. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants. Affirming, the appeals court noted that “Holmes must show clear and unequivocal acknowledgment of the debt to prevail. … [T]he District Court found that the several payments Smith made to Holmes between 1997 and 1998, each or in aggregate, did not satisfy the precision called for.”

Performer Michael Jackson's agreement to allow the Universal Music Group (UMG) to market and sell his music nationally didn't establish personal contacts sufficient to sustain personal jurisdiction over the entertainer in a Lanham Act suit filed against him in Indiana over CD packaging information, the U.S. District Court for the District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division, decided. Woodward v. Jackson, 1:03-cv-0844. The former members of the group Ripples and Waves, which had been based in Gary, IN, in the late 1960s, as was the Jackson Five, filed suit over an album titled “Ripples and Waves ' An Introduction to The Jackson Five.” The Jacksons acknowledged that they never performed as Ripple and Waves, though that information has been published in another CD, in a biography and on fan Web sites. The plaintiffs nevertheless claimed that the defendants, who included other members of the Jackson Five and their original record company Motown, had made no effort to correct the misinformation. To obtain personal jurisdiction over California resident Michael Jackson, the plaintiffs cited an unrelated complaint Jackson had filed against UMG in California in which he stated that he and UMG had a joint interest in the manufacture, sale and distribution of his pre-1976 music. But the district court granted Jackson's motion to dismiss, noting: “A long leap in logic would be required to equate the allegations in [the California complaint] with an admission by Michael Jackson that he has participated in, or ratified in some manner, the use of the name Ripples and Waves in connection with the title or liner notes in the particular CD at issue.” The court then refused UMG's bid to apply a 2-year Indiana statute of limitations for defamation actions to the Lanham Act claim (the federal statute doesn't have its own limitations period) and instead stated that it couldn't rule out applying Indiana's 6-year statute of limitations for fraud actions. But also dismissing the claim against UMG, the district court concluded that “a claim that the members of the Jackson 5 and its record company attempted to trade on the name and reputation of a regional musical group that has been defunct for over 15 years should draw some skepticism from anyone with even slight exposure to popular music over the past 35 years.”