Ed's Bootlegs (inc. Supreme Court summons), not so legal after all? Options

[OutToDry]

I've been searching for public notes on what may be happening in the courtroom, here's one of them. I suspect the selling of bootlegs on Ed's website are not legal as they appear.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/18/New_Complaints.htm

Rock and RollThree members of the band Live claim their former lead singer Edward Kowalczyk owes them $225,000 for music he sold on his Web site, in New York County Court.

This post has been edited by OutToDry: Jun 14 2010, 2:59 pm

[Sakhmet2]

I used that word in a context which describes a fraudulant act....so it's really semantics

Contract law *is* semantics.
And, strictly speaking, not all of what is alleged against Levin is fraudulent, which in the broadest sense of the term is false representation of material fact for advantage. Some of the stuff is fraudulent, of course, but most of it falls into the category of breach of trust since Levin and his company had been given power of attorney over the bank accounts and corporate entities of all four of the band. For all I know in NYS this may be a more serious (as well as a more accurate) charge.

I'm not sure whether it's all quite as cut and dry as the document states.

It never is. Reading a few contested divorce cases is enough to convince anyone that people in a relationship are not always in the same relationship - or on the same planet.

Like it really explicitly states how he demanded an ultimatum. Surely this COULD be something where they feel that's what he did, but maybe it was kind of given but in a much more round about way and he said he didn't want to have to do it and he meant that etc etc but it still seemed rotten and all that.

Did you ever see "Almost Famous"? There's that scene in the airplane where all the band members tell the lead guitarist that they hate him because (they feel) he's always holding it over their heads that he might leave, and that he "holds himself above" them. Classic man. Read about a lot of bands, and that's how it is. I'm not saying it's right, but it happens.

interesting. I still can't see how this guy could just blatantly deny his friends/business partners their due legal entitlements. Not to mention the '29 fiasco. How do you do that and then hang out and have a beer with your mates? But i remain an indifferent observer until all the facts come to light.

I agree. There are plenty of puzzling things about these claims. Not least of which is the continued existence of the band after agreeing to the contract.

I am interested to hear the other side of the story, but I can predict that it will be a whole lot of legal jargon and twisted music business logic.
I'm sure it will satisfy some and make the rest of us want to throw up.

Which will be different from this how?
These are allegations, not proven fact yet.