Federal judge rules that Fred Durst and Co.’s fraud lawsuit against label, claiming $200 million in unpaid royalties, can continue
Limp Bizkit’s $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music will head to trial after a federal judge denied the label’s motion to dismiss the case.
Fred Durst and company sued UMG — the world’s largest record company — in October 2024 in one of the most notable lawsuits of the year in the music industry. Along with alleging that UMG withheld as much as $200 million in royalties, in an equally notable “fraud” allegation, the band claimed that the company had “designed and implemented royalty software and systems that were deliberately designed to conceal artists’ royalties and keep those profits for itself.”
The following month, UMG filed its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it was “based on a fallacy” and claiming that “Plaintiffs’ entire narrative that UMG tried to conceal royalties is a fiction.”
“When someone is caught red-handed, their first response is often to hire very expensive outside law firms who first, as a matter of course, try anything to dismiss the suit when they are in trouble with the facts,” a representative for the band said in November 2024. “In this case, we believe UMG is using a typical, formulaic, well-trodden strategy of reaching for any escape route by desperately grasping at technicalities.”
While Limp Bizkit’s lawsuit did encounter some legal hurdles earlier this year, the federal judge’s ruling Monday, obtained by Rolling Stone, sets the stage for a trial between the band and its former label.
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“The Court denies the Motion to Dismiss challenging the sufficiency of the copyright claims,” Judge Perry Anderson wrote. “Defendant shall file its Answer to the copyright claims asserted in the 1st [amended complaint] by no later than April 7, 2025.”
UMG is also currently embroiled in a lawsuit with its current artist Drake, who accuses the label of inflating streams of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
