5 Dumbest Music Lawsuits That Ever Went to Court

Often, when a lawsuit makes the news, it’s usually blown out of proportion. Many saw the famous McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit as an example of American greed and trigger-happy suing habits, when it was actually perfectly justifiable considering what really happened. However, there are still many lawsuits out there that are just plain silly. And many of them involve the music industry. Let’s dive into five of the dumbest music lawsuits that ever happened!

1. John Fogerty Got Sued Over His Own Music

When it comes to the dumbest music lawsuits, the case of John Fogerty is probably the most unfair. The legal battle between John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original music label was a long-winded and sad journey, though (luckily) he has since been given the rights to CCR’s songs.

However, back in 1985, Fogerty was sued for plagiarizing his own music. His 1985 track “The Old Man Down The Road” was too similar to CCR’s 1970 song “Run Through The Jungle”. His old record company owned the rights to CCR’s song and thus sued him for infringing on his own work. The case was settled out of court.

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2. Limewire Was Sued for a Whopping $75 Trillion

For those who are too young to remember Limewire, this peer-to-peer file-sharing platform was notorious for facilitating the exchange of stolen music at the turn of the millennium. The platform found itself in a lot of legal trouble with the Recording Industry Association Of America (or RIAA) in the early aughts. 

The association calculated just how much money was lost due to the illegal sharing of albums and songs on the platform. The RIAA tried to say those losses added up to an insane $75 trillion, and they tried to sue the platform for that amount of money. Does that much money even exist? Probably. But Limewire didn’t have that much, the RIAA was out of line, and the two entities settled for $105 million.

3. The Planets “Plagiarized” Another Musician’s Use of Silence

The case of Mike Batt (of The Planets) and John Cage posed a question, probably for the very first time: Can silence be copyrighted? According to Cage, Batt stole his classical composition called “4’33” in Batt’s song “A One Minute Silence”. Both songs are composed of basically nothing, and Cage wasn’t happy about his incredibly unique concept being stolen. Ultimately, the case was settled out of court and Batt had to pay Cage a whopping six-figure fee.

4. RIAA Went After a Dead Woman

The RIAA strikes again! This is one of the craziest examples of the dumbest music lawsuits to ever make the headlines. In the early 2000s, the RIAA sued an elderly woman for downloading almost 1,000 songs onto her computer. However, the woman in question didn’t own a computer and also had no idea how to even use illegally downloaded music files. She was also quite dead.

The woman in question passed away at 83 years old before the lawsuit even started, and the legal team at the RIAA didn’t get the memo. This probably isn’t the first instance of such a strange thing happening, considering the RIAA’s history of going after the elderly.

5. Someone Sued Justin Bieber Over His Screaming Fans

At a Justin Beiber concert in the 2010s, one mother of a young fan alleged that the screaming of Beiber’s fans caused her to suffer hearing loss. She filed a lawsuit against the “Baby” singer. The suit noted that he intentionally “created a wave-like effect of screaming by pointing into various sections of the arena.” 

Surprisingly, it took the courts five whole months to come to the conclusion that concerts are loud and Justin Beiber fans are even louder, and the whole case was dropped.

Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage

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