Quincy Jones’ $9.4 million verdict in a lawsuit over Michael Jackson royalties was slashed considerably by a California appeals court on Tuesday.
Jones will now get about $2.6 million in license fees after the three-judge panel overturned awards of $6.9 million the producer originally won in 2017. The appeals court ruled the judge should not have allowed the jury to decide certain points and should have interpreted the contract himself.
He had also appealed two rulings that went against him during the trial — both were denied.
At the time of the original verdict, Michael Jackson estate attorneys Howard Weitzman and Zia Modabber told TheWrap, “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.”
Quincy Jones met Jackson on “The Wiz,” and produced the albums “Off The Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad.”