Taylor Swift Deposition Drama, Neil Young Lawsuit, Lil Durk Trial Delay & More Top Music Law News

THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift was once again dragged into the never-ending legal war between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over the movie It Ends With Us — with a confusing back-and-forth over whether the superstar was going to be deposed.

Baldoni has been claiming for months that Swift’s friendship with Lively makes her a key witness in the ugly case, in which Lively alleges Baldoni sexually harassed her and then orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign. In June, a judge granted him access to Swift and Lively’s text messages as part of the document discovery process.

Now, Baldoni wants to depose Swift. In a court filing last week, his lawyers claimed the superstar had “agreed to appear for deposition” after her schedule opened up next month. But Swift’s attorneys quickly said that wasn’t what had actually happened.

“My client did not agree to a deposition,” Swift’s attorney wrote. “But if she is forced into a deposition, we advised (after first hearing about the deposition just three days ago) that her schedule would accommodate the time required during the week of October 20.”

As is so often the case in the frenetic Baldoni-Lively spectacle, it was all over quickly: A judge denied Baldoni’s request for special accommodation to depose Swift. To understand why, go read the full story here, featuring access to the judge’s full written ruling.

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Other top stories this week…

TORT OF GOLD – Neil Young was hit with a lawsuit over the name of his new backing band, called The Chrome Hearts, filed by a fashion brand that has used the same name for decades. The luxury apparel company says the rock legend’s new name — he usually tours and records with another group called Crazy Horse — clearly infringes its trademark rights to the name.

A “MEASLY” DEAL – A class action settlement for songwriters that netted their lawyers a far larger payout is officially history. The 2019 deal, which secured a total of $53,000 for songwriters but paid their lawyers a whopping $1.7 million, was struck down in 2023 by an appeals court that said the ruling left them in “disbelief.” Following that slapdown, a lower judge heeded the warning this week: He awarded the lawyers just $86,022.

DUA LIPA MERCH – Sony merchandise venture Ceremony of Roses sued to stop bootleggers from selling knockoff Dua Lipa merch during her Radical Optimism tour — the latest in a recent spate of anti-counterfeiting lawsuits brought by official merch retailers.

LIL NAS X UPDATE – Weeks after the star was arrested and hit with felony charges for allegedly attacking police officers and resisting arrest while wandering naked in Los Angeles, a judge said Lil Nas had entered an inpatient treatment program: “We’re not going to get specific about where he is,” the judge said at a court hearing: “It’s private, nobody needs to know where he is, but he is in treatment.”

DURK TRIAL DELAY – Lil Durk’s trial on federal murder-for-hire charges might be postponed from October to January, after prosecutors and several of his co-defendants agreed to the change. Durk himself didn’t consent to the delay, but prosecutors argued that a three-month wait won’t violate his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Stay tuned.

“COMPLETE BOONDOGGLE” – Calvin Harris took legal action against his longtime financial adviser Thomas St. John, claiming that he duped him into investing $22.5 million in a doomed real estate project as a means “to simply steal” funds from the star DJ. The revelations came in court filings that revealed details of a private arbitration case that has been underway since June.

COMEY SUES DOJ – Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking trial, filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department claiming her July termination was an “unlawful and unconstitutional” act of political payback by President Donald Trump against her father, former FBI director James B. Comey. Maurene Comey was previously one of the lead prosecutors in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell, a top accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein.

SMOKEY CASE UPDATE – A Los Angeles judge ruled that the former housekeepers accusing Smokey Robinson of rape can stay anonymous at this stage of the lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in 2027. The singer’s lawyers argued it’s unfair that the accusers can remain Jane Does while dragging Robinson through the mud, but the judge was unmoved: “For now, this early on in this case, I don’t think their identities need to be revealed.”

RECORD SETTLEMENT – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Concord reached a settlement to end their lawsuit against the Internet Archive over the “Great 78 Project” — a program to digitize thousands of old vinyl records from Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby and other iconic artists. The Internet Archive claimed it was just trying to preserve the works, but the labels called it “wholesale theft of generations of music.”

DIDDY APPEAL – Making the Band contestant Sara Rivers launched an appeal following the dismissal of her sexual assault lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs. The move will challenge a ruling last month that dismissed the case, which accused Diddy of sexually harassing and groping Rivers during the filming of the 2000s MTV reality show, because Rivers waited too long to sue.

TRIAL AVERTED – Trey Songz reached a settlement to end a lawsuit claiming he sexually assaulted a woman named Jauhara Jeffries at a Miami nightclub on New Year’s Eve in 2018. The pair — and the nightclub itself — had been preparing to go to trial next month when the settlement was reached.