Kanye West and Ludacris were accused in Federal Court yesterday, on separate accounts of copyright infringement. A group out of New Jersey accused the artists of taking lyrics and music that ended up churning out impressive hits for both.
The New Jersey foursome and their lawyer Mel Sachs refer to the group as It’s Our Family
Sachs said that music from Ludacris’ track Stand Up was taken from a demo the group released. Yesterday, Sachs told a Manhattan jury that the group cannot battle Goliath as David alone. The group is seeking an unspecified amount of financial damage.
The groups song was called Straight Like That, which they released in 2001. A lawyer for EMI music; Christine Lepera, denied all of the charges. “The first time they ever heard of the song ‘Straight Like That’ was when this lawsuit was filed,“ Lepera said.
Lepera may not have the burden of proof, but Sachs explained to the jury not to be misguided by the “celebrity” of the artists and that his clients sent hundreds of demos, including ones to Ludacris and Good Music Records head, West.
Lepera stated the artists never received them.
Ludacris, who was in court, denied comment. West was absent, but both are expected to testify.
In other court news, in the long running case involved B.I.G’s murder and the lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles, the same judge who declared the original mistrial and demanded the city pay $1.1 Million to the family, told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday that she had been deceived about evidence in the wrongful-death suit
District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered one of the family lawyers, Perry R. Sanders Jr., to explain information that originally misled the judge involving information spoken on behalf of the family regarding the unsolved drive-by shooting in 1997. Sanders had said he had no information on an alleged police conspiracy, behind the murder.
Judge Cooper declared a mistrial last summer in the family’s lawsuit, after she found that LA detectives had hidden statements linking the murder to other LAPD officers, David A. Mack and Rafael Perez. In January, Cooper ordered a payment of the attorney fees as penalties for withholding evidence.
Cooper said Tuesday that she had been deceived by the family, and the city now says B.I.G. family attorney Sanders knowingly deceived courts as to whether the family was notified of any police wrong doings. To back up her claim, Cooper submitted a four-page report prepared in November 2002 by a private investigator working for Biggie’s family. The report contains details of an interview with a prison informant that the family said it had not seen, according to Vincent Marella, a lawyer representing the city.
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“This shows beyond any question that everything they said they never had, they had,” Marella told the Times. Sanders denied the claims.
While this all seems like petty semantics, it’s hard to consider that nearly a decade after BIG’s death, neither his family nor the LAPD are any closer to solving this murder or finding out who within the corrupt police organization was involved.
