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Rolling Stones seek dismissal of song-theft lawsuit on jurisdiction grounds
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 6 July 2023
The Rolling Stones have filed a motion to dismiss the song-theft lawsuit that was launched against them earlier this year. Said motion mainly raises jurisdiction issues with the lawsuit, which was filed by a Spanish musician against a British band with the courts in Louisiana.
Sergio Garcia Fernandez claims that the Stones’ 2020 track ‘Living In A Ghost Town’ rips off two songs he wrote in the 2000s, ‘So Sorry’ and ‘Seed Of God’.
His lawsuit claims that the Stones track lifted “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts, the electric bass line parts, the tempos, and other key signatures” from ‘So Sorry’ and the “harmonic and chord progression and melody” from ‘Seed Of God’.
As for how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards might have heard Fernandez’s music before writing ‘Living In A Ghost Town’, the Spanish musician alleged that he had previously sent a demo CD to “an immediate family member” of Jagger.
According to Digital Music News, legal reps for the Stones filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last month. The court filing notes that Fernandez’s songs were not written in the US and are not registered with the US Copyright Office.
Meanwhile, he is a Spanish citizen, and Jagger and Richards are British citizens. And the Stones company also targeted in the lawsuit, Promopub, is based in the Netherlands. And while Richards is based in the US, he’s in Connecticut not Louisiana.
Indeed, it seems the only person with any direct links to Louisiana is the lawyer hired by Fernandez, who is based in New Orleans.
With all that in mind, the band’s court filing states: “The more appropriate forum for this case would be a court in Europe because plaintiff, a Spanish citizen and domiciliary, asserts infringement of his non-US works against defendants who all have a presence in Europe”.
So, the band conclude, the Louisiana court should dismiss this lawsuit and then Fernandez can decide whether he wants to pursue any action on this side of the Atlantic.
Although, if that doesn’t happen, at the very least – they add – the dispute should be moved to the slightly more convenient jurisdiction of New York.
