A pop-punk group that is suing Juice WRLD says the lawsuit will move forward despite the rapper’s death.
Before Juice WRLD passed away, the group in question, Yellowcard, filed a $15 million lawsuit against the 21-year-old rapper. In October, Jarad Higgins, more popularly known as Juice WRLD, was accused of sampling some elements of the band’s 2006 song “Holly Wood Died” in his breakout hit song, “Lucid Dreams” in 2017. After the rapper’s tragic and abrupt death, the case was put on hold. However, new reports are that the case will continue posthumously.
According to court documents obtained by XXL, reps for Yellowcard filed a motion to extend the amount of time given to Juice WRLD and his co-defendants’ reps to respond to the complaints filed against them. Reports are that the initial deadline was December 9, and the recently filed court papers are requesting that the due date be postponed to February 4, 2020.
After the suit was filed in October, Richard Busch, the legal representative for Yellowcard band members Peter Mosley, Ryan Key, Sean Wellman-Mackin, and Longineu Parson, said that “Lucid Dreams” was a blatant copy of his clients’ 2006 song, according to Digital Music News. “As alleged in the complaint, this is not just a generic Emo Rap song, but is a blatant copy of significant original compositional elements of ‘Holly Wood Died’ in several respects,” Busch told DMN. He later told told the publication that the case was on hold following the rapper’s untimely death. “We’re still digesting the news,” he said.
Now that the lawsuit has resumed, all the remaining parties will face litigation for the alleged copyright infringement. It will, however, be difficult to prove that Juice WRLD, who was only 8-years-old when the song “Holly Wood Died” came out in 2006, knew about the song before he wrote his 2017 hit.
However, Juice WRLD was not the only party listed in the lawsuit filed by Busch in October. Among the defendants are record producer Taz Taylor, Kobalt Music Publishing, 19-year-old songwriter, and producer behind the smash hit, Nick Mira and the labels behind Juice WRLD, Grade A Productions, LLC and Interscope Productions.
Yellowcard and their legal team are suing Juice WRLD and co-defendants for $15 million. The song “Lucid Dreams” went 6x platinum and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went number 1 on the US Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart.
