Producer Opts For New Lawyers Amid Settlement Talks With Shenseea, UMG
Producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett has opted for new legal representation, amid settlement discussions with Jamaican singer Shenseea and her label Interscope/Universal Music Group (UMG) in a copyright lawsuit over her song Lick.
On Wednesday, Pupa Nas-T’s lawyer, Courtney K. Davy, announced his surprise termination in a letter addressed to New York District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.
“The plaintiffs have terminated my office representation. Plaintiffs respectfully request that this matter be stayed for 45 days so that they can obtain new counsel,” Davy wrote in the letter, which was obtained by DancehallMag.
No reason for the termination was provided to the Court but Pupa Nas-T said that he was simply going in a different direction with the lawsuit.
“I haven’t fired my lawyer, I am simply going a different way in terms of my legal representation as we enter a critical phase in these legal proceedings,” the New York-based producer told DancehallMag on Saturday (October 15).
On Thursday, UMG and Shenseea’s lawyers, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, indicated that they had no objection to Davy’s withdrawal from the case, but they requested an extension to their deadline to file an answer to the lawsuit, in order to facilitate a resumption of settlement talks with Pupa Nas-T’s new lawyer.
“In order to give Defendants an opportunity to resume settlement discussions with Plaintiffs’ new counsel, Defendants respectfully request that their deadline to answer or otherwise move (currently October 17, 2022) be stayed pending the Court’s decision on the application, and if the application is granted, that Defendants’ deadline to answer or otherwise move be set for no earlier than 21 days after the appearance of Plaintiffs’ new counsel,” their letter said.
On Friday, the judge granted the request to stay the matter for 30 days and ordered Pupa Nas-T to inform the Court of the status of his legal representation by November 4.
The judge also extended the deadline for Shenseea to answer the lawsuit by 30 days, to November 16, 2022.
The lawsuit was originally brought against Shenseea, her label Interscope Records, Pupa Nas-T’s publisher ATAL Music Limited and their rep Alexandre Escolier in March 2022.
In June, ATAL and Escolier were discharged from the lawsuit, after Pupa Nas-T failed to provide to the Court proof of service on them.
In August, UMG told the Court that their subsidiary Interscope Records was improperly named as a defendant in the case. The revelation prompted Pupa Nas-T to withdraw a pending motion for default judgment, to allow Shenseea and UMG to file a response to the suit.
It was last month that Judge Vyskocil granted Shenseea and UMG an extension of 14 days, from October 3, 2022, to October 17, 2022, to answer the lawsuit.
Pupa Nas-T has demanded over $10 million USD in damages after he was allegedly not paid an agreed $5,000 fee for a sample, which was used in Shenseea’s song Lick with rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
The producer alleged that he had not signed a written agreement and that the song was released without his consent.
Lick, which appeared on Shenseea’s debut album Alpha, had sampled elements from the 2002 remix of Denise ‘Saucey Wow’ Belfon’s Work. The remix was done by the production duo Masters At Work (‘Little’ Louie Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez), after they obtained a license from Pupa Nas-T, who had produced and co-wrote the original song in 1999 with Harkness Taitt.
The lawsuit had demanded, among other things, that Nas-T be awarded copyright infringement damages in the amount of $150,000; wilful infringement damages in excess of $10,000,000; and actual damages and profits from 43 sources including sales, ringtones, streaming, endorsements, and touring.
Shenseea, 26, had signed with Interscope Records in 2019, a joint venture with Rvssian’s Rich Immigrants.