Greg Kihn Rock Star Recordings Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: The rock musician Greg Kihn is suing the owners of the website Wolfgang’s Vault, a platform created to market recordings make by the late promoter Bill Graham.
- Why: Kihn alleges he and other rock musicians had recordings of their performances published on the website without their consent.
- Where: The case is being heard in the Ninth Circuit court of appeal.
Rock musicians say their shows were illegally recorded and posted to a music memorabilia website without their consent, and are asking for millions — if not billions — of dollars in compensation, a class action lawsuit alleges.
Last year, rock star Greg Kihn — best known for his 1983 hit “Jeopardy” — was given the green light to proceed with a class action lawsuit filed against music memorabilia website Wolfgang’s Vault, Law360 reports.
Wolfgang’s Vault is a platform created to market recordings made by the late concert promoter Bill Graham. However, according to Kihn and other composers he is now representing for the class action, the recordings were taken without the musicians’ consent.
In the Ninth Circuit court of appeal Dec. 9, Kihn defended the use of the class action to find a resolution for the allegations. Some of the questions at play included how performers could prove they never consented to having their shows recorded by Graham, and whether one performer could represent a multiplicity of situations.
“You may be correct, ultimately, that in any given case there wasn’t consent, but I’m trying to imagine the class-wide trial on that issue and having difficulty imagining how it would be fair to the defendants, to force them to defend against so many different claims in one consolidated proceeding,” U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Bress reportedly said in the hearing.
In Kihn’s case, there was some complexity to the case, because some of the recordings on Wolfgang’s Vault were made in situations where musicians had given their consent to be recorded, for example a radio hour.
The judges also asked whether consent had to be given by every person in the band, or whether it could simply be given by a lead member. Counsel for the defendants reportedly argued that this intricacy indicated class action was a poor way to resolve the issue.
The website also said certification of the class action lawsuit had spiked its alleged liability from about $9 million to “potentially billions of dollars in damages.”
In other music-related legal news, session musicians or background vocalists who played on satellite radio, digital cable, or non-interactive webcasting before Dec. 31, 2016, and have not yet received compensation from the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund may be eligible to receive music performers’ royalties thanks to a $45.8 million lawsuit settlement. Click here for more details.
What do you think of the allegations against the website? Let us know in the comments!
Kihn, his publishing company and their class of musicians and composers are represented by Melissa S. Weiner and Ma$hew A. Pearson of Pearson Simon & Warshaw LLP and Neville L. Johnson, Douglas L. Johnson and Arun Dayalan of Johnson & Johnson LLP.
The Rock Star Wolfgang’s Vault Class Action Lawsuit is Kihn et al. v. Bill Graham Archives LLC et al., Case No. 20-17397, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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