The widow of a musician and producer who worked with Tupac Shakur has dropped her lawsuit against a company formed by the late mother of the slain rapper in which the plaintiff alleged she was wrongfully denied royalty payments.
Capucine Jackson, the widow of Johnny Lee Jackson, sought compensatory damages in her breach-of-contract action against Amaru Entertainment Inc. Originally filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in October 2022, a third amended complaint was brought last Nov. 19 that added Arizona-based Klock Work Entertainment Corp. as a plaintiff.
On Tuesday, Jackson’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge James I. Montgomery asking that the lawsuit be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be revived. The court papers do not state if a settlement was reached or if Jackson is not pursuing the case for other reasons.
The Jackson couple formed Klock Work in Los Angeles in 1995 in order to join the growing number of independent production companies in the rap music industry. Amaru Entertainment is the record label founded by Shakur’s mother, the late Afeni Shakur, in 1997.
Johnny Jackson, also known as Johnny J, worked with Shakur on many of his well-known recordings, including “How Do U Want It,” “Hit ‘Em Up” and “All Eyez On Me,” the suit states. He signed a producer agreement with Amaru in May 2001 that dealt with all the master recordings on which he worked with the rapper and outlined his royalty rights, the suit states.
Jackson’ contended that every time Shakur’s successors are paid royalties in connection with his released masters, she and Klock Work were entitled to their portion of the compensation.
But in earlier court papers, Amaru attorneys contended that Jackson’s case should be dismissed for a lack of triable issues. According to the Amaru lawyers, the thrust of Jackson’s breach of contract claim was two agreements entered into in 1999 and 2001 that obligated Amaru to issue a letter of direction to SoundExchange, directing it to pay Jackson a share of digital performance royalties that SoundExchange has collected on Amaru’s behalf since 2003.
SoundExchange is a nonprofit performing rights organization formed in 2003 that collects digital performance royalties from digital radio companies when they license and use master recordings, then distributes the royalties to artists and copyright owners who obtain letters of direction from the featured artists or their representatives.
But Jackson’s claim ignored that both of those agreements unambiguously provided that the plaintiff is only entitled to a royalty on sales and exploitations of the recordings by Shakur’s distributor, Interscope, or its licensees, which does not include SoundExchange, according to Amaru’s attorneys’ court papers.
Contrary to Jackson’s claim, neither the 1999 producer agreement nor the global contract entitle her to a share of Amaru’s digital performance royalties collected by SoundExchange, the Amaru lawyers’ further stated in their court papers.
Shakur died Sept. 13, 1996 at age 25 six days after being shot in a drive-by incident in Las Vegas. Afeni Shakur died in 2016 at age 69.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source mynewsla.com ’
