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Artist News Business News Legal
Rihanna settles legal battle with her father
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 9 September 2021
Rihanna has settled a lawsuit she filed against her father ahead of a scheduled court hearing later this month, seemingly keen to avoid proceeding with the family feud in the public spotlight.
The star sued her father Ronald Fenty in January 2019 in the LA courts, accusing him of exploiting her name and brand to fraudulently generate millions of dollars. He had set up a company in 2017 called Fenty Entertainment LLC which had no formal connections to his daughter but, it was alleged, had nevertheless repeatedly claimed to represent Rihanna’s professional interests.
Among the specific allegations in the 2019 lawsuit were that Fenty Senior had negotiated deals with one third-party for Rihanna to perform fifteen shows in Latin America at $1 million a gig and two short spots in LA and Las Vegas for $400,000. He had told the third-party that his daughter “loved the idea” and wanted to sign up for the shows, but in fact he’d not spoken to her about the proposed concerts, nor did he have a formal mandate to have any such conversations in the first place.
Another complaint in the legal filing was that Fenty Senior’s company had tried to file an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office for protected use of the Fenty mark in relation to a planned boutique hotel venture. But, Rihanna’s people claimed, that was just a ruse to make it look like Fenty Senior’s company had some sort of formal affiliation with his daughter’s business, she having also used her surname in various business ventures.
Past efforts to get Fenty to stop trading off his daughter’s fame had failed, the lawsuit said, and therefore “judicial intervention is necessary because defendants have made clear that they have no intention of ceasing their fraudulent and infringing conduct”.
However, it seems, judicial intervention may not be required. According to Radar, Rihanna has now filed papers with the court dismissing her lawsuit after a settlement was seemingly reached. The case had originally been due in court back in June but was postponed to later this month because of COVID and Rihanna being in the UK and unable to travel to LA. But now we won’t get any courtroom fun times.
