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Artist News Business News Legal
Soundgarden settle legal dispute with Vicky Cornell
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 18 April 2023
Soundgarden have reached a settlement in their ongoing legal battle with the widow of the band’s late frontman Chris Cornell. It means that new songs Cornell was working on with the band prior to his death in 2017 will now be released.
That new material was at the heart of the legal battle, with a dispute over who owns the recordings and how they might be released. In a lawsuit filed in 2019, Vicky Cornell also accused the other members of Soundgarden of withholding royalties due to her late husband’s estate and making false statements in a bid to force her hand over the new music.
A second lawsuit then followed in 2021 in relation to another dispute over the valuation of Chris Cornell’s share in the band and their business. The two lawsuits were then combined, and a magistrate judge provided an opinion on the various disagreements, more or less siding with the band and concluding that Vicky Cornell had not provided sufficient evidence to back up her allegations.
Though, during a court hearing last month, the main judge overseeing the case urged the band’s legal team to sympathetically consider her position. Revealing that he was a Soundgarden fan, he encouraged both sides in the dispute to reach a settlement, noting that the ongoing litigation was a “terrible distraction” from the band’s legacy.
Perhaps that judicial intervention worked. A statement on Instagram yesterday declared: “Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, on behalf of the estate of Chris Cornell, are happy to announce they have reached an amicable out of court resolution”.
“The reconciliation marks a new partnership between the two parties”, it added, “which will allow Soundgarden fans around the world to hear the final songs that the band and Chris were working on. The two parties are united and coming together to propel, honour and build upon Soundgarden’s incredible legacy as well as Chris’s indelible mark on music history – as one of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of all time”.
