LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California appeals court on Tuesday overturned most of a 2017 jury verdict awarding Quincy Jones $9.4 million in royalties and fees from the Michael Jackson estate over the use of Jones-produced Jackson hits in the concert film “This Is It” and two Cirque du Soleil shows.
The appeals court found that the jury wrongly granted Jones money from licensing fees, wrongly went beyond the 10% royalty rate Jones was owed for record sales, and incorrectly granted Jones money for remixes of Jackson’s master recordings.
Jones, who was already a music business giant when he produced the classic Jackson albums “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” had sought $30 million from the estate when he first filed the lawsuit in 2013.
“Quincy Jones was the last person we thought would try to take advantage of Michael Jackson by filing a lawsuit three years after he died asking for tens of millions of dollars he wasn’t entitled to,” Jackson attorney Howard Weitzman said in a statement.
The trial centered on the definitions of terms in the two contracts Jackson and Jones signed in 1978 and 1985.
