Techno DJ and producer Sara Landry is now involved in legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic with her former managers at UK-based The Night Department.
The management firm sued Landry in the London courts back in August alleging she breached her old management contract. She has now filed counterclaims with the London courts while also filing a separate trademark lawsuit with the courts in New York.
The core of the dispute seems to relate to The Night Department’s involvement in Landry’s own record label Hekate Records. The management company initially helped run Landry’s label without a written contract in place under a 50/50 arrangement.
But there was then a subsequent disagreement over whether that meant the managers simply got 50% of the label’s revenue or if they also owned 50% of the label’s copyrights.
In her legal filings, Landry also raises various other gripes with her former managers, who she reckons were sometimes taking the piss. Then there’s one specific gripe in relation to a time when one of her ex-managers actually took a piss.
The Night Department and its representatives “failed to act as professional music managers in public”, her New York lawsuit alleges, which harmed the “goodwill and reputation” of both the management company itself, but also Landry.
For example, it goes on, Harry Glaisher, who was Landry’s day-to-day manager, “publicly urinated inside the Coachella grounds” in 2025 when she was playing at the festival, and that “urination spectacle was witnessed by multiple people” and “resulted in a Coachella security guard threatening to take Glaisher’s festival wristband”.
This alleged “misconduct” on Glaisher’s part, her lawsuit says, “became known in the electronic music industry and was associated with Landry, harming her reputation”. It also harmed the goodwill associated with Landry's trademarks, the lawsuit adds, given the New York case is trademark dispute.
The Night Department alluded to this particular gripe in its lawsuit against Landry back in August, stating that the incident actually “happened entirely out of public view, on a private supply road where no public access was granted, with no more than two or three people present”.
Which means Glaisher’s sneaky Coachella piss “did not cause any, or any appreciable, embarrassment, shame or harm to the defendant or to her reputation, brand, goodwill or businesses”.
The dispute over The Night Department’s role in Landry's label seemingly came to a head when the managers tried to formalise that part of their partnership with the DJ. That led to a breakdown in the artist/manager relationship and Landry ultimately sacking The Night Department.
The management company, led by Matthew Verovkins, accepted the sacking but said Landry had breached her management contract and sued for commissions it would have been due had that breach not occurred.
As it has become more common for artists to run their own labels and work with distributors to get their music onto digital platforms, it has also become pretty common for managers to help artists run those labels.
It’s generally agreed that that requires work beyond what would normally be expected of an artist manager, which means they should get a bigger share than the usual 20% commission on the artist’s recordings income. A 50/50 split in that regard is not uncommon.
This dispute illustrates why managers - who do often work with artists without a written contract in place - should really get the basics of any deals down in writing. Especially if they are working with the artist on projects beyond a normal management services deal with its 20% commission.
The Night Department seemingly got involved in Hekate Records around about the time it started managing Landry in 2020. A formal management contract was then signed in 2023, but a provisional agreement in relation to the company’s involvement in Landry’s label wasn’t drafted until 2024.
Landry says she was initially told by her managers in 2020 that she would retain “full control” of Hekate Records, despite the management firm getting a 50% interest in return for helping run the label.
But presumably the managers meant “full artistic control”, whereas she seemingly assumed they meant “full ownership” of the company and the rights in all the recordings it released. The managers meant for the 50/50 split to apply to the rights as well as the revenues.
The litigation in the London courts relates to The Night Department’s allegation that Landry breached her management contract and the dispute over the rights in the Hekate recordings.
In the New York lawsuit, Landry claims that the management firm has exploited her personal brand and the label’s brand since she stopped working with her former managers, in doing so infringing her trademarks. Landry - who is American but currently based in Amsterdam - incorporated her own companies in the US and registered trademarks in her brands with the US Trademark Office.
The trademark claims seem to mainly centre on The Night Department continuing to distribute Landry’s music under her personal brand and the Hekate label brand via Believe to the streaming services, and also referencing its involvement with the DJ and the label when promoting the management company.
None of which sounds like a particularly strong case for trademark infringement, but we’ll see how the New York courts respond regarding that strand of the wider legal battle.