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Angry Fed. Judge Throws Out Song Infringement Suit

By Celia Ampel

A Miami company's decision to defend a small-potatoes copyright case all the way to trial paid off when the case was dismissed after a few hours — by an angry federal judge. Southern District of New York federal Judge Richard Sullivan found the plaintiffs' only trial witness, the principal of two companies that claimed Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) willfully infringed copyrights by playing six songs on the radio, contradicted years of amended complaints by saying his companies didn't hold the copyrights. Latin American Music Co. v. Spanish Broadcasting System, 13-cv-1526. The plaintiffs' attorney also said the witness, Raul Bernard, had recordings of the songs being broadcast on the radio after previously telling the judge the recordings were missing.

“Nobody should think that you get to do what's gone on in this case and we all just walk away and shrug our shoulders,” District Judge Sullivan told Bernard and his New York attorney Kelly Talcott. This doesn't happen in federal court, people making statements that are directly contradicted by their attorneys and that constitute grave violations of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and potentially perjury. So this is really serious.”

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