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Nicole Scherzinger brands Pussycat Dolls lawsuit “meritless”
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 13 January 2022
Following Nicole Scherzinger’s announcement last week that the Pussycat Dolls reunion tour was cancelled, the singer has now filed new court documents in the ongoing legal battle over her involvement in said tour.
Scherzinger calls the earlier breach of contract lawsuit brought against her by PCD manager Robin Antin “meritless” and says that she is not to blame for the reunion project collapsing.
Schezinger’s response to the lawsuit, published by the New York Post, states: “This case is a meritless effort to enforce an expired 2019 agreement to perform a concert tour in 2019 and 2020. Had Antin participated in the negotiation in good faith instead of stubbornly trying to revive the old agreement, the likelihood is that the parties would have reached an agreement for a new tour”.
Antin sued Scherzinger in September last year, accusing her of “extortion”. Antin said that after the group’s reunion shows had been postponed due to the pandemic, Scherzinger had demanded 75% or profits and “complete creative control” in order for her to commit to continue with the project.
Negotiations to get Scherzinger involved in the first place had already taken two years, and she had agreed to accept 49% of profits from the shows in 2019. Delays in announcing new shows, as a result of the new negotiations, resulted in Live Nation demanding back a $600,000 advance it had paid ahead of the original dates.
According to Antin’s lawsuit, Scherzinger had justified her demand for more money by citing “the growth of her personal brand and the opportunities she would have to forego” in order to continue taking part in the reunion. But, the lawsuit argued, she had already agreed to take part in the tour and so had breached that agreement by refusing to comply with the original deal.
In a statement from her attorney Howard King last year, Scherzinger claimed that Antin’s allegations were “ludicrous and false”. In the official response filed with the New York courts this week, Scherzinger sets out why, basically arguing that the 2020 tour dates were cancelled, rather than postponed, which is why a new contract was required and the old contract is unenforceable.
The new filing also accuses Antin of “mismanagement” and “defamatory efforts publicly to shift blame” for the collapse of the tour onto Scherzinger.
Last week, Scherzinger announced on Instagram that the reunion would no longer be going ahead, saying: “With the ever evolving circumstances surrounding the pandemic, I understand the decision that the tour dates had to be cancelled”.
Two other members of the Pussycat Dolls, Jessica Sutta and Carmit Bachar, then responded with their own statement, saying that Scherzinger’s post was the first they’d heard of any cancellation. Antin also posted a statement on Instagram, suggesting that Scherzinger had gone rogue in announcing the end of the reunion.
