Music producer Quincy Jones was awarded $9.4 million by a Los Angeles jury Wednesday in a trial over royalties and production fees from the recordings he made with Michael Jackson, the Associated Press reported.
Jones had sought $30 million in his suit, which he filed in 2013. Michael Jackson’s estate had countered that the producer was owed $392,000.
Last week, Jones took the stand to testify that he to testify on how he “was cheated out of a lot of money — a lot of money,” according to the New York Daily News.
After Jackson’s death, Jones testified, the pop star’s estate remixed songs so they could freeze the producer out of royalties earned on the songs. “One example is ‘This Is It,'” Jones said. “My name is nowhere near that.” He says he made less than $500,000 in royalties from the film, but the estate made $90 million from the 2009 movie.
When Jackson estate attorney Howard Weitzman asserted that Jones has received $18 million since 2009, when Jackson died, and that licensing revenue paid previously to Jones was a “gift,” Jones contested that idea, saying, “If we made the record, we deserve to get paid. It’s that simple.”
Henry Gradstein, one of Jones’ lawyers, said Weitzman was misunderstanding Jones’ contracts. “The contracts expressly provide for licensing revenue,” he said. “The parties, for 35 years, have interpreted the contracts that way and paid on that basis. To say it was a ‘gift,’ that’s just absurd.”
In a statement provided to TheWrap, Michael Jackson estate attorneys Weitzman and Zia Modabber said that giving Jones “millions of dollars that he has no right to receive under his contracts is wrong.”
“While the jury denied Quincy Jones $21 million – or more than two-thirds of what he demanded — from The Estate of Michael Jackson, we still believe that giving him millions of dollars that he has no right to receive under his contracts is wrong. This would reinterpret the legal language in, and effectively rewrite, contracts that Mr. Jones lived under for more than three decades, admitted he never read, referred to as ‘contract, montract,’ and told the jurors he didn’t ‘give a damn’ about,” Weitzman and Modabber said. “Any amount above and beyond what is called for in his contracts is too much and unfair to Michael’s heirs. Although Mr. Jones is portraying this is a victory for artists’ rights, the real artist is Michael Jackson and it is his money Mr. Jones is seeking.”
Prince and Michael Jackson: Rivals and Revolutionaries (Photos)
If you were alive in the 1980s, there was only one question: Prince or Michael Jackson?
It took some of us years to realize it, but there was only one answer: Both.
Prince and Michael Jackson were both Midwesterners born in 1958: Prince in Minneapolis, on June 7, and Michael Jackson in Gary, Indiana, on August 29. If you can't tell from this picture, both blew up in the 1970s.
Both Prince and Michael Jackson were crossover artists who were among the only African-Americans whose videos were played in the early days of MTV.
In 1985, when Prince and Michael Jackson dominated the charts, Prince was criticized for not performing on "We Are the World," a song co-written by Jackson to help starving African children. Prince was reportedly too shy to perform with his fellow artists. Prince & the Revolution did record a gorgeous song for the "We Are the World" album -- "4 the Tears in Your Eyes."
Their race and sexuality were constantly questioned at the peak of their popularity. Both played with the clueless speculation with androgynous wardrobe choices, and their lyrics.
"Am I black or white/am I straight or gay?" Prince sang on "Controversy."
"Who's black/who's white," Jackson sang on "Black or White."
Both were Jehovah's Witnesses. Jackson reportedly proselytized door-to-door near his family's home in Encino, Calif. Prince often sang about God and Jesus, including in "I Would Die 4 U." He backed away from some of his dirtier lyrics as he embraced his religion more strongly.
Michael Jackson played with the concept of revolution, artistically, by dressing like the leader of a military coup. Prince led the Revolution.
Though Prince portrayed himself as dirty-minded, he noted the irony of Michael Jackson being embroiled in scandal in 2004.
"What are my contemporaries doing now?" he said in an Associated Press interview, while Jackson was on trial accused of child molestation. "I'm not entangled in a bunch of lawsuits and a web that I can't get out of. I can hold my head up ... a happily married man who has his head in order. There isn't a bunch of scandal in my life."
"I ain't never had my nose done!" Prince announced at a March 2004 concert, while Jackson was on trial. Some in the crowd took it as a shot at Jackson, who was later found not guilty of the criminal accusations.
Jackson, the King of Pop, named one of his children Prince, which only fueled speculation about his feelings toward the elder Prince.
Sadly, they both died much too young -- Jackson on June 25, 2010, and Prince on April 21, 2016. Rest in peace.
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Prince would have turned 60 today. Let’s look back on his strange relationship with Michael Jackson
If you were alive in the 1980s, there was only one question: Prince or Michael Jackson?
It took some of us years to realize it, but there was only one answer: Both.