Within the past few months this column has focused on at least two rather interesting legal proceedings—one, an on-going trial and the second, a trial that may be. Today, we’ll revisit them both for further analysis.
The first is the Gaye family lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for copyright infringement, aka, musical plagiarism regarding the hit song “Blurred Lines” and Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit, “Got to Give it Up.” Besides having won that phase of the suit which was against Gaye’s publishing company for not protecting the song rights, the Gaye siblings have also just won the fundamental heart of the next phase of the case. This part had the jurist in the case, U.S. district Judge John Kronstadt, declare that the Gaye family had demonstrated the necessary evidence for a full trial on the issue of copyright infringement. Thicke and Williams had requested a summary judgement against the Gaye family case, and the judge denied that. The full jury trial is scheduled to begin on February 10, 2015.
The judge concluded that there were material facts existing regarding the substantial similarity of signature phrases between the two songs, including “the hooks, bass lines, keyboard chords, harmonic structures and vocal melodies.” Apparently, the Gaye family’s audio demonstration to the judge of the lyrics to “Blurred Lines” played directly over the music for “Got to Give It Up” convinced him that the songs were too similar to be accidental or coincidental. The Gaye suit also alleged that Robin Thicke had stolen another Marvin Gaye tune, “After the Dance” for Thicke’s song, “Love After War,” and it is now included in the case.
The February trial promises to be the biggest challenge yet against the pervasive use of derivatives and over-sampling of prior music in order to ‘create” current hit songs. We should expect a bit of a media circus surrounding it, even though, so far, it has been relatively quiet. The jury in the trial will again use the standard of the ‘judgement of an ordinary person’ in listening to the two songs, although the focus will have to be on the printed sheet music compositions, rather than just the audio elements. Judge Kronstadt ruled against the Gaye family’s attempt to include copyrights in the actual audio sounds of the Marvin Gaye composition, since they did not provide proof that the audio portions of the song had been filed in the federal copyright office. The jury, however, will get to hear both songs in their deliberations.
As mentioned previously in this column, it does not look good for the Thicke-Williams team. Not only will a lot of money likely change hands, this case will most probably set a long-standing precedent in the field, and substantially influence peoples’ musical reputations. There are a lot of current artists who have based their careers on what Thicke and Williams did, Sean “Diddy” Combs, for one.
The second legal proceeding is now an actual filing of a lawsuit against President Barack Obama by the House Republicans. On Nov. 20, a day after president Obama announced his new executive orders regarding immigration (which, by the way, covers more than just Hispanics in the USA), the Republican-controlled House of Representatives entered a lawsuit over—can you believe it?—the administration’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare). This is a law that the Republicans have tried to repeal numerous times, and failing that and not being able to stop the president from issuing his immigration executive orders, they have decided on this last gasp desperate attempt to undermine the president’s authority. Their perception of presidential overreach is not the same as the reality of such overreach. The percentage of successful times one part of Congress has sued the executive branch in American history is virtually 0. In general, unless there is a real Constitutional issue at hand, as in the famous, fundamental case of Marbury v Madison, way back in 1803, the federal court refuses to get involved in political disputes between Congress and the president, particularly when it is only one branch of Congress rather than both involved. That tradition continues even with this very conservative generation of Supreme Court justices.
The House of Representatives would have to demonstrate to a federal court’s satisfaction that as an institution, it had been harmed personally by President Obama’s actions. In other words, the president’s executive actions and decisions on how to enforce legislation would have to effectively nullify the votes of House members, leaving them no other option than court intervention to correct this perceived injustice. But, in fact, there has been no such harm done by the president to the House—the House has stopped itself from voting on issues, not the president.
Thus, we should expect a traditional result from this legal effort by the House Republicans. The strongest probability is that the case will be dismissed at its first level in the Washington, D.C., federal district court for lack of standing. That should occur in a few months, either by January or February 2015. This case will simply not have a positive result for the Republican plaintiffs, although they will, in all likelihood, merely find other ways to bedevil the POTUS.
Post Script: As of Dec. 3, there is also now a consolidated state lawsuit against President Obama for essentially using his executive order authority to move immigration reform forward. The federal lawsuit combines Republican administrations in: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The lawsuit basically asks the federal court to require President Obama to go through Congress before enforcing laws, “rather than making them up himself.” This lawsuit has the chance of a snowball in hell to be successful, but they won’t quit.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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