Diddy case explained, Garth Brooks abuse allegations and more legal news

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly music law newsletter from Billboard Pro, giving you a one-stop cheat sheet with big new cases, important rulings, and all the fun stuff in between.

This week: a deep dive into the case against Diddy with the help of R. Kelly’s prosecutors; sexual assault allegations against country star Garth Brooks; a judge refuses to rule on the rights to Jay-Z’s debut album; and much more.

THE BIG STORY: Diddy’s case, explained by R. Kelly’s accusers

In many ways, the charges unsealed last month against Sean “Diddy” Combs mirror those 2019 against R. Kelly, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2022 after a jury convicted him of decades of abuse. Both cases center on allegations that a powerful musician violated federal racketeering laws — usually targeting gangsters — by essentially building an organized crime syndicate focused on facilitating his own sexual abuse.

So to understand more, this week I took a deep dive into the Combs case with Nadia Shihata and Maria Cruz Melendez, two of the lead prosecutors who handled the case against Kelly. Now in private practice, Shihata and Cruz Melendez discussed the Combs case Billboard in separate interviews – about how a case like this is built, who else could be charged and what the coming battle will look like. Read our full story here.

Other top stories this week…

STUNNING ACCUSATIONS – Country music star Garth Brooks became the latest music industry figure to face abuse allegations made by an unnamed woman who says he sexually assaulted her while she worked for him as a hairstylist. The case took an unusual twist: the revelation that it was Brooks who filed a mysterious John Doe lawsuit last month in an attempt to block the publication of allegations he called “racketeering.” In a statement strongly denying the allegations, Brooks said he was “incapable” of such behavior and would “trust the system” to clear his name.

NO IDEA, YOUR HONOR – Martin Shkreli told a federal judge that he could not remember all the people he shared copies with Once upon a time in Shaolinan extremely rare Wu-Tang Clan album that he once owned – and where it is “very likely” that other people still have copies of the (supposedly) unique work. The revelation came amid a lawsuit filed against him by PleasrDAO, a digital art collective that purchased the digital art Once upon a time after Shkreli forfeited it to prosecutors as part of his securities fraud conviction.

REASONABLE DOUBTS – With a court-ordered auction looming to sell Damon Dash’s third stake in Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records, the judge overseeing the case said he would not rule on a thorny issue of copyright. That is, can Jay-Z use the copyright termination to regain control of the rights to his debut album Reasonable doubt from Roc-A-Fella? That’s quite a crucial question for the Dash auction, since the album is the company’s only real revenue-generating asset. But the judge said the case was neither the time nor the place for such a ruling: “The court currently has no jurisdiction over the validity of Carter’s copyright termination notice.”

THE GAME SHOULD NOT CONTINUE – Ken Caillat, a music producer who worked on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumorsfiled a lawsuit against the makers of the hit Broadway play Stereophoneclaiming they stole material from his memoirs about working on the legendary album. The lawsuit – which calls the piece an “unauthorized adaptation” of his 2012 book – raises difficult questions about copyright protection and real-life stories.

R. KELLY AT SCOTUS – The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from R. Kelly over his 2022 convictions in Chicago on child pornography and seduction charges, leaving him without a direct appeal from a verdict that sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The ruling effectively concludes one of Kelly’s two sets of sexual abuse convictions; the other — a September 2021 guilty verdict on racketeering charges brought by New York prosecutors and resulting in a 30-year prison sentence — is still pending appeal to a lower appeals court.

TIKTOK lawsuit – Attorneys general from more than a dozen states have filed lawsuits against TikTok over allegations that the app — a key marketing tool in the modern music industry — is harming the mental health of young people. The lawsuits allege that TikTok deliberately made its algorithm addictive despite knowing that long-term use will lead to “profound psychological and physiological harm” in children.