Hall & Oates Resolve Legal Feud Over ‘Ultimate Partnership Betrayal’

The bitter legal dispute between Hall & Oates duo Daryl Hall and John Oates has come to an end.

The pair became locked in litigation back in 2023 over Oates’ plan to sell his half of their joint venture to Primary Wave, a move Hall called the “ultimate partnership betrayal.” Court filings from Monday (Aug. 11) say the dispute has now been resolved in confidential arbitration — meaning we don’t know how things shook out, including whether or not the Primary Wave deal is going through.

Hall & Oates enjoyed massive success in the 1970s and 1980s, topping the Billboard Hot 100 a whopping six times with hits like “Rich Girl” and “Maneater.” They broke up and reunited a number of times over the years and were touring together as recently as 2022.  

The pair’s relationship publicly blew up in November 2023, however, when Hall launched arbitration seeking to block Oates from selling his stake in Whole Oats Enterprises — which holds the band’s name and likeness rights as well as royalty income — to Primary Wave.

Hall said he was “blindsided” by Oates’ sale plans, saying he did not want to partner with Primary Wave because he disagreed with how the music company goes about exploiting intellectual property rights from the many prominent artists in its portfolio.

The legal filings also shed light on a larger creative “divorce” between Hall and Oates, with Hall claiming his former partner had recently become “adversarial and aggressive” and that they’d been talking about dissolving their touring company and other joint ventures.

Oates was more tacit in his court papers, saying he was “tremendously disappointed” with Hall’s “inflammatory, outlandish and inaccurate statements.” Oates wrote, “I can only say that Daryl’s accusations that I breached our agreement, went ‘behind’ his back, ‘acted in bad faith,’ and the like, are not true.”

Hall won a court injunction against Oates at the end of November 2023, with a judge in Nashville ruling that the proposed Primary Wave deal could not go through until the duo’s claims were resolved privately in arbitration.

After that, the Nashville court docket was quiet until Monday, when Hall’s lawyers dismissed the case and said in a brief status report that “the claims have been adjudicated in arbitration” and a final judgment has been entered in the confidential proceedings.

Details of the arbitration judgment are not available. A rep for Primary Wave did not return Billboard’s inquiry about whether or not the outcome allows it to buy the Whole Oats Enterprises assets as originally intended.

Attorneys for Hall and Oates have not commented on the legal resolution.