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Post Malone calls for Circles authorship case to be thrown out

By | Published on Friday 19 August 2022

Post Malone

Post Malone has called for a court to throw out a song authorship case brought against him, saying that his accuser hid “critical” text messages that would have disproven his claims.

Malone is being sued by Tyler Armes – a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and member of Canadian rap-rock outfit Down With Webster – who joined the rapper and producer Frank Dukes for an all-night jamming session in August 2018. He claims that during that session he contributed to the song that become ‘Circles’.

However, in a new court filing, Malone’s team claim that Armes hid a number of text messages that would have contradicted his claims of co-authorship of that work.

“These critical documents speak volumes as to plaintiff’s intent on the night during which he claims to have jointly authored musical material with defendants, and also refute plaintiff’s narrative that defendants invited him to work with them to be a co-author”, says the new filing, according to Law360.

The text messages in question apparently show that Armes was “desperately” trying to get guestlist spots for two Post Malone shows from his manager Dre London. And while his pleas offer to bring “lots of girls for later”, they are “glaringly devoid of any mention of any songwriting with Post, no less a songwriting session”.

They also claim that Armes doctored some texts that he did produce during the discovery phase of the case, removing London’s side of the conversation in order to hide the fact that the manager was apparently unaware of any co-songwriting.

Malone’s side are calling for sanctions on Armes as a result of all this, saying that they believe it is serious enough to throw out the entire case. They argue that Armes and his legal representatives previously told the judge that they had produced all necessary information about the legal dispute, but were “fully aware that it was intentionally false”. This, they say, “is tantamount to committing a fraud on this court”.

In response, Armes’ lawyer Alison S Hart said that there was “zero merit” in the move for sanctions, saying that it was “nothing more than a desperate ploy by Post Malone to avoid having this case decided on the merits since he has no valid defences to Tyler Armes’s claims in this case”.

In addition to calling for the whole case to be thrown out, Post Malone’s side also requested that the upcoming trial be pushed back from October to December.

The case – currently – continues.



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