The estate of Johnny Cash is suing Coca-Cola, accusing the company of hiring a tribute singer to imitate the country singer’s voice illegally for a college football ad, as Billboard reports.
The federal complaint filed Tuesday in Nashville is the first major case to come under Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act (ELVIS) Act. Enacted in 2024, the ELVIS Act expanded the state’s statutory right of publicity to protect a person’s voice from being exploited.
The manager of Cash’s estate, the John R. Cash Revocable Trust, cited a song in a commercial, which has been airing since August during college football games. In the lawsuit, the estate claims that the voice in the ad sounds “remarkably” like Cash’s, and that it is the voice of a performer named Shawn Barker, who is a professional Cash tribute performer.
“Stealing the voice of an artist is theft. It is theft of his integrity, identity and humanity,” Tim Warnock of Loeb & Loeb, a lawyer for Cash’s estate, wrote. “The trust brings this lawsuit to protect the voice of Johnny Cash — and to send a message that protects the voice of all of the artists whose music enriches our lives.”
While the Cash estate does license the late performer’s intellectual property — such as his songs “Ragged Old Flag” and “Personal Jesus,” which were used in Super Bowl telecasts — the estate claims Coca-Cola “never even bothered to ask the trust for a license” in the case of this ad where they used a voice sounding like Cash that aired during college football games.
According to the complaint, “This case arises from Coca-Cola’s pirating Johnny Cash’s voice in a nationwide advertising campaign to enrich itself — without asking for permission or providing any compensation to the humble man and artist who created the goodwill from which Coca-Cola now profits.”
A rep for Coca-Cola did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
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The estate is seeking a court injunction that would remove the ad from airing alongside financial damages over alleged violations of Cash’s rights under the ELVIS Act, among seeking other damages.
While this is the first major case to be brought under the ELVIS Act, the legislation was intended to protect artists against artificial intelligence deepfakes and voice clones. The Cash estate’s complaint against Coca-Cola does not allege artificial intelligence was used in the commercial, as Billboard notes.
