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    Judge Orders Monster Energy Co. To Pay $668,000 In Legal Fees To Beastie Boys

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2013 Views
    Rapper Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz gestures to someone outside a New York City courthouse after a jury awarded the “Beastie Boys” $1.7 million in a copyright violation case against beverage-maker Monster Energy Co., Thursday, June 5, 2014. Now a judge has also ordered Monster to pay attorney costs of $668,000 to the Beastie Boys. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

    By Larry Neumeister

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    The maker of the Monster Energy drink must pay $668,000 of the Beastie Boys' legal fees after the rappers chose to win at all costs in their copyright violation trial, a decision that resulted in a $1.7 million jury verdict in their favor, a judge says.

    U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote in a ruling Monday that his review of the band's legal bills suggests that the "Beastie Boys opted to pay for, and received, the 'Cadillac Escalade,' not the 'Honda Civic'" of legal representation.

    He said his attorney fee award fell well short of the $2.4 million in legal fees that was sought from the Corona, California-based Monster Energy Co., but it was still sizeable enough that the band will come out ahead by more than $532,000 above its reasonable costs.

    Last June, the Beastie Boys — known in part for the anthem "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" off their 1986 debut album — won their verdict from a federal jury weighing the value of five songs used by Monster without authorization in a video.

    Engelmayer wrote that the lawsuit brought by two surviving Beastie Boys and the wife of deceased band member and gravelly voiced rapper Adam "MCA" Yauch resulted in a hard-fought legal match.

    "Presiding over trial and hearing the surviving Beastie Boys' testimony, it was apparent to the court that this case had great personal significance to them," he said. "Monster's commercial exploitation of the band's music and songs, and what the Beastie Boys perceived as Monster's crass misappropriation of the name of the recently deceased Yauch in its video promoting its energy drinks, appeared to have deeply offended plaintiffs."

    Yauch died of cancer in May 2012 at age 47.

    The judge said Beastie Boys' band members Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond approached the case "with special zeal," testifying that as a matter of principle they have not licensed their music for product advertisements and would have turned down Monster if it had asked for permission.

    Lawyers for Monster and the Beastie Boys did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

    The Beastie Boys, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, have turned out four No. 1 albums and sold more than 40 million records as they helped bring hip-hop to the mainstream over the last three decades.

    Category:News
    Tags:Beastie BoysMonster Energy



    Harris Dickinson Toys With Ambiguity In “Babygirl” While Keeping a Secret From Nicole Kidman

    Tuesday, December 24, 2024

    Harris Dickinson was nervous to approach Nicole Kidman.

    This would not necessarily be notable under normal circumstances, but the English actor had already been cast to star opposite her in the erotic drama "Babygirl," as the intern who initiates an affair with Kidman's buttoned-up CEO. They'd had a zoom with the writer-director Halina Reijn, who was excited by their playful banter and sure that Dickinson would hold his own. And yet when he found himself at the same event as Kidman, shyness took over. He admitted as much to Margaret Qualley, who took things into her own hands and introduced them.

    "She helped me break the ice a bit," Dickinson said in a recent interview.

    On set would be an entirely different story. Dickinson might not be nearly as "puckishly audacious" as his character Samuel but in the making of "Babygirl," he, Kidman and Reijn had no choice but to dive fearlessly into this exploration of sexual power dynamics, going to intimate, awkward, exhilarating and meme-able places. It's made the film, in theaters Christmas Day, one of the year's must-sees.

    "There was an unspoken thing that we adhered to," Dickinson said. "We weren't getting to know each other's personal lives. When we were working and we were the characters, we didn't veer away from the material. I never tried to attach all of the history of Nicole Kidman. Otherwise it probably would have been a bit of a mess."

    His is a performance that reconfirms what many in the film world have suspected since his debut seven years ago as a Brooklyn tough questioning his sexuality in Eliza Hittman's "Beach Rats": Dickinson is one of the most exciting young talents around.

    Dickinson, 28, grew up in Leytonstone, in East London — the same neck of the woods as... Read More

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