Led Zep lawyers want $800k for defending “Stairway to Heaven” lawsuit

Lead attorney is billing at $330 an hour, says it's “below” going rate.

Read the whole story

 

[Fukengruven]

deadaccountwalking[/url]":2jsu7lxo]It's always about the lawyers... never the plaintiffs or defendants.

The defendants have to pay those fees to the tune of $800k. This is totally about the defendants. The lawyers didn't defend this case pro bono nor hoping they could get paid by the plaintiff...

 

[amp88]

I can't help but feel this is a twist of the knife, but I can understand the motivation for it.

 

[Fukengruven]

Infinity4011[/url]":29snjow7]

Fukengruven[/url]":29snjow7]

deadaccountwalking[/url]":29snjow7]It's always about the lawyers... never the plaintiffs or defendants.

The defendants have to pay those fees to the tune of $800k. This is totally about the defendants. The lawyers didn't defend this case pro bono nor hoping they could get paid by the plaintiff...

It's totally about the defendant's lawyers, you mean.

How so? Who do you think had to pay that $800k to defend this case? The lawyers certainly didn't pay themselves. Hint: It was the defendants. Now the defendants would like their money back, paid by the plaintiffs.

This case is about the defendants not having to pay to defend a case that should never have been brought to court.

 

[fcx56]

vaporland[/url]":2iwyd3rw]I guess being famous for winning the "Stairway To Heaven" lawsuit wasn't payment enough.

Famous? Quick, without looking it up.. what was that law firm again?

edit: they'd get more fame if they did it for free, the only lawyers to work pro-bono for millionaires!

 

[Pee Wee Marquette]

Lead attorney is billing at $330 an hour, says it's “below” going rate.
-----------------
It is . . .

 

[mdt]

With very few exceptions, songs follow the same general rules for how they are written.

1) Three chords, used over and over in different orders at different pacing.
2) Certain chords are usually played in progression (For example, C is the most popular chord in most popular music, and is followed by the chord of G nearly a third of the time)
3) Certain chords are avoided (such as the Augmented 4th, or it's inverse, unless you're making an emergency siren!)

This means that, given the limited number of chords, and the general rules around them, that certain chord progressions are going to be popular (because they sound good together!). This means that songs will tend to have certain parts that are similar.

This is why suing over 'part of a song' is stupid to anyone who knows anything at all about music. I'm a relative novice (used to play, don't anymore, family did though, and uncle was a luthier), but even I know that it's stupid. However, the average jury has no idea how music works, which is why greedy #@$(*$#^'s sue over part of a song having similar chord progressions.

The easiest way to defeat that, I've always thought, is to look for music that's in the public domain that has the same progression being sued over. That would require a database of music though, which is probably harder to find.

 

[lam1]

The whole thing is out of whack. The layers are getting rich arguing who owes who over a 40+ year old songs written by bands that no longer exist with half the members already dead. The songs should've been in public domain long ago.

 

[mikesmith]

amp88[/url]":2cvsvgwa]I can't help but feel this is a twist of the knife, but I can understand the motivation for it.

So you think if some group brings a spurious lawsuit against you for something that happened decades ago and you weren't guilty of you should have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending yourself and that's just fine?

 

[Kevin Lowe]

One reunion show oughta cover it.

 

[learsfool]

Everything about this is what's wrong with our legal system.

1) The 'estate' thing is a madness that we never should have had. I don't deserve to get a bunch of money because of something my grandpa did
2) Most of us work as least as hard and do more useful work than those lawyers do, yet only reap a fraction of the benefits

It's backwards and mad and embarrassing.

 

[cmanderson]

vaporland[/url]":33374xrg]I guess being famous for winning the "Stairway To Heaven" lawsuit wasn't payment enough.

Are they? I read the article and still don't know who they are, even if I read their names I wouldn't remember them now. I don't.

 

[ZhanMing057]

Pee Wee Marquette[/url]":158rm9uj]Lead attorney is billing at $330 an hour, says it's “below” going rate.
-----------------
It is . . .

It's actually a lot cheaper than going rates. If you made me guess a number (not a lawyer, but know a bunch of them as friends/family) for the go-to guy of the Led Zeps I would have put him at around $700-1,000.

As for those who complain why this number is so high...it's a combination of high costs of entry (significant debt, lost earning potential of law school years and such) and the prevalence of rule-of-law. You'll notice that legal counsel is a lot cheaper in societies where this is not the case - but I'd bet that few would want that instead of the status quo.

 

[Boskone]

Seems reasonable. If it was a new thing I might think differently, but it was 40-odd years between creation of the supposed originating song and the suit.

As for lawyer's fees...I kinda see both ways. Maybe it's just exposure to some of the fees charged in tech cases, but $800k over a couple years for lawyers, assistants, witnesses, and all that shit doesn't seem bad.

 

[Madlyb]

I am very conflicted on this.

First, I absolutely believe this was a spurious lawsuit and should have never been brought and I believe the lawyers should be well paid for defending Zep and the plaintiff should be held accountable, but...how far should you take this?

If one musician goes after another and the latter has much deeper pockets, then the latter can simply throw money at the suit and then make the plaintiff absorb those costs regardless of whether they were reasonable or not. This could serve as a serious deterrent for small or independent artists to protect their works against major labels and famous artists.

 

[ZhanMing057]

learsfool[/url]":2k4ocghk]
2) Most of us work as least as hard and do more useful work than those lawyers do, yet only reap a fraction of the benefits

But people don't usually take on as much debt at as high interest rates as the average law school graduate (mean debt is somewhere around the $100,000 mark, but likely higher for top tier schools). Add to that income forgone for three years and interests accrued and the lifetime opportunity cost is easily $450,000 or so. This is what is essentially being paid when you hire an attorney.

Also keep in mind that these people are at the very top of their game. Maybe 5% of all lawyers ever get to bill at $300 an hour. At median rates it takes a *long* time to get a positive return on investment. My point is that at the median, an engineering degree or CS is a *far* better investment than law school. It might even be better at the top quintile. And when you move below the median people in technical fields have far lower rates of unemployment. That risk also has to be factored in.

TLDR: Most expensive things in life are expensive for good reasons. Legal counsel is not an exception.

 

[Zi8]

deadaccountwalking[/url]":vzucpbcm]It's always about the lawyers... never the plaintiffs or defendants.

Somewhat true in this case. I get the point---to discourage frivolous lawsuits, but this solution does seem very lawyer-centric. The defendant gets their legal bill paid for, but what about the hundreds of hours the defendants must have spent following the case, consulting with their defense, and the general uncertainty for years caused by the lawsuit? It seems the system only recognizes the legal costs.

Also, this will tend to inflate lawyer's fees costs. For instance, if I think as a defendant I won't have to pay the legal bills, I can afford more expensive lawyers. The plaintiff can already afford expensive lawyers (because they will get a cut if they win), so the system seems set up to funnel money to lawyers on both sides.

A clearer, fairer, and less subjective copyright system would be more about efficiency and less about the lawyers.

 

[JamesKatt]

amp88[/url]":35p5xqb7]I can't help but feel this is a twist of the knife, but I can understand the motivation for it.

The plaintiffs are like trolls in this case. They were greedy. They wanted hundreds of millions of dollars. They should not have brought this expensive lawsuit in the first place.

They deserve to be punished by having to pay the legal fees of the defendants. Led Zeppelin's lawyers are actually being charitable by asking for such a small amount. They easily could have charged $1000 an hour.

 

[Isahaya]

$330/hour is well below the going rate for experienced legal counsel specialized in that area of law.

They are asking for a relatively small amount compared to what they could have asked for considering attorney hours plus defendant time and grief.

 

[Zi8]

ZhanMing057[/url]":2ly1x0he]
...

TLDR: Most expensive things in life are expensive for good reasons. Legal counsel is not an exception.

Good points, but I should add that another reason legal counsel is expensive is because it's an arms race to some extent.

A surgeon may be expensive because a highly trained surgeon is crucial for the patient---it's the intrinsic skill of the surgeon that's important. But litigators are squaring off against their own kind, trying to manuever each other. Some of what makes a top lawyer expensive isn't their inherent skills, but just that they are better than the other guy, just like professional athletes.

 

[bb-15]

learsfool[/url]":1p9bkkq6]Everything about this is what's wrong with our legal system.

1) The 'estate' thing is a madness that we never should have had. I don't deserve to get a bunch of money because of something my grandpa did
2) Most of us work as least as hard and do more useful work than those lawyers do, yet only reap a fraction of the benefits

It's backwards and mad and embarrassing.

I pretty much agree. But I'll add what was missed by Randy California's estate but which was understood by Randy himself.
1. Did Page borrow a a part of Taurus and put a variation of that into the beginning of Stairway to Heaven?
Maybe. Page heard Taurus because the bands Spirit and Led Zeppelin had played in the same concerts in the early days.
2. Was Randy California irritated that he did not get a songwriting credit for Starway to Heaven? Yes, that's well known. But he understood something that his estate completely missed.
- Randy realized that going to court over this was not a good idea because California probably knew he could not win.
3. The reality about Page (and other song writers have done this) which has been known by blues / rock musicians for decades is that Page has borrowed pieces of other songs and hasn't given credit for that.
But Page AFAIK has never lost in court over that.
Going to court over borrowing ideas does not mean you can win.
- Randy understood that and his estate was completely clueless.

** Realize I'm not singling out Page alone. There has been lots of discussion about the limits of song copyright about other artists. And sometimes a Page song might be brought up like Dazed and Confused.
http://www.newmediarights.org/business_ ... r_own_song

But again, can anyone win in court over this? A very different question.

I think the thoughts of Bob Dylan and BB King are appropriate.

In 2012, when Bob Dylan was questioned over his alleged plagiarism of others music he responded, "It's an old thing – it's part of the tradition. It goes way back".[8] Princeton University professor of American history Sean Wilentz defended Dylan's appropriation of music stating "crediting bits and pieces of another's work is scholarly tradition, not an artistic tradition".[9] In 1998, B.B. King stated on the issue, "I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_plagiarism

 

[verden]

I've been playing guitar long enough to know that vague similarities are unavoidable. That's true of all music. In my opinion, this suit was a frivolous cash grab. As such, it doesn't seem unreasonable that the losing party should pay.

 

[WaveRunner]

The funny thing is thousands of songs have bitten off that tree before and after, but we do point to songs after Stairway to Heaven as being influenced by it. If you have a sweet sounding arpeggio at the beginning and you transition into something way to heavy to match that starting point, you will be compared to Stairway to Heaven.

 

[Luddite Curmudgeon]

amp88[/url]":2bla5qcj]I can't help but feel this is a twist of the knife, but I can understand the motivation for it.

Not to mention the Trust's lawyer's bombastic performance made the whole thing go longer than it probably should have and wasted a lot of time in the process. If it was less so, the attorneys may not be doing this. But if you waste my time with this frivolous add-on stuff, you're going to pay.

 

[dlux]

If Peter Grant was still alive, this matter would have been settled out in a back alley.

 

[Louis XVI]

bongbong[/url]":3fm1cy6t]We wouldnt need lawyers if the Laws were simplified to the point that any ordinary john or jane can use the law themselves.
Sometimes it makes me think they intentionally made the laws so complex to make sure there are lawyers.

It's a complicated world. When laws are oversimplified, there will be more situations that don't fit the applicable laws, leading to more unfair or unreasonable outcomes.

 

[z0phi3l]

hope the judge throws a few extra thousands to the bill, may make some of the scumbag lawyers think twice before filling obviously bogus lawsuits

 

[Rookie_MIB]

I'm cant help but feel as if the whole lawsuit only came about due to the lawsuit involving 'Blurred Lines' and how it was similar to the 'tone' of Marvin Gayes music. In that case, Gaye won, probably inspiring them to try and accomplish the same. The stakes here though are significantly higher as this song has been a classic for over 40 years now. More than a few million dollars were at stake.

But, if it was such a blatant act of copying or infringement, why wait almost 50 years??? Maybe perhaps because only now has the copyright of a song been so blurred (pun intended) by Gaye's estate recent win?

What this does do though is provide almost no guidance - one song's 'tone' is infringing, one isn't. There doesn't appear to be a bright hard line which naturally makes for absolutely terrible law.

 

[Oldmanalex]

Isahaya[/url]":1mfr0g3z]$330/hour is well below the going rate for experienced legal counsel specialized in that area of law.

They are asking for a relatively small amount compared to what they could have asked for considering attorney hours plus defendant time and grief.

Agreed. This is a surprisingly modest legal bill for a complex two year suit. And when you reach for a $100MM+ jackpot, and fall short, you are lucky that the other side racked up so little defending themselves. Actually tells one that plaintiffs and their attorneys did not think there was much chance of losing. Had they been more worried $5-10MM would have been an unsurprising amount to spend on defense. Incidentally IANAL.

 

[WaveRunner]

Rookie_MIB[/url]":19qkb7kf]I'm cant help but feel as if the whole lawsuit only came about due to the lawsuit involving 'Blurred Lines' and how it was similar to the 'tone' of Marvin Gayes music. In that case, Gaye won, probably inspiring them to try and accomplish the same. The stakes here though are significantly higher as this song has been a classic for over 40 years now. More than a few million dollars were at stake.

But, if it was such a blatant act of copying or infringement, why wait almost 50 years??? Maybe perhaps because only now has the copyright of a song been so blurred (pun intended) by Gaye's estate recent win?

What this does do though is provide almost no guidance - one song's 'tone' is infringing, one isn't. There doesn't appear to be a bright hard line which naturally makes for absolutely terrible law.

There's a slight difference in this case... where as Thicke and others were trying to hold onto the originality aspect of their song. Page went the other route and said it wasn't original at all.

 

[Sixclaws]

Well, he's buying his stairway to heaven.

 

[deadaccountwalking]

Silky Sam was a travelling man
And he went from town to town
He's pass you by with the world all in his eye
And his ear close to the ground...

R.I.P Zep

 

[macmedia]

$330 an hour is a "bargain". Plaintiffs better pay up before the real rate is levied. I just paid $250 to my rinky dink lawyer for 15 minutes of his time ($1000/hr) to save me from a $300 speeding ticket (and 40 mo. of insurance increases).

 

[Pariah]

ZhanMing057[/url]":1v8bwzzz]

Pee Wee Marquette[/url]":1v8bwzzz]Lead attorney is billing at $330 an hour, says it's “below” going rate.
-----------------
It is . . .

It's actually a lot cheaper than going rates. If you made me guess a number (not a lawyer, but know a bunch of them as friends/family) for the go-to guy of the Led Zeps I would have put him at around $700-1,000.

As for those who complain why this number is so high...it's a combination of high costs of entry (significant debt, lost earning potential of law school years and such) and the prevalence of rule-of-law. You'll notice that legal counsel is a lot cheaper in societies where this is not the case - but I'd bet that few would want that instead of the status quo.

Yep, anyone who thinks $300 an hour is high is...well...high.
I used to charge $150 an hour to DJ at wedding receptions, no expensive degree of office required to do that, just no stage fright.