A judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed against Sony Music by the estates of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell - two thirds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience - can proceed to trial.
Both the major label and the Jimi Hendrix estate, via the Experience Hendrix company, have argued that the dispute should be fought in the New York courts. However, those arguments, and an attempt by Sony to get the case dismissed, have failed.
"Sony Music has failed in its latest attempt to prevent the estates of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell pursuing their claims for infringement of copyright and performers’ rights to trial", a statement from the estates yesterday declared.
The Redding and Mitchell estates - through UK-based companies - claim that they control rights in relation to the Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings catalogue. These rights, they claim, are being infringed by Experience Hendrix and its distribution partner Sony.
For their part, Experience Hendrix and Sony argue that, after Hendrix’s death in 1970, both Redding and Mitchell signed agreements giving up any claims to rights and royalties stemming from the Jimi Hendrix Experience in return for “significant monetary consideration”. And in January 2022, Experience Hendrix and Sony filed legal papers with the New York courts seeking confirmation that those agreements are still in force.
The Redding and Mitchell estates then filed their lawsuits in the UK. Sony said that litigation should be paused pending the case in New York. But reps for the Redding and Mitchell estates countered that their dispute with the major related to rights under UK copyright law, and was mainly concerned with the digital exploitation of the Hendrix recordings which, they reckon, falls outside the scope of the 1970s agreements.
Sony's attempts to get the UK case paused failed, and instead the New York court paused the US case pending the outcome of the London dispute. The major had one more go at getting the UK lawsuit thrown out of court at a two day hearing last October. But that didn't work and the whole thing should now get to trial in the London courts next year.
Lawrence Abramson of Keystone Law, who represented the estates, says he hopes that this will be an opportunity to “obtain some justice for the families of Noel and Mitch”.
“No one is denying that Jimi Hendrix was one of, if not, the greatest guitarist of all time”, he goes on. “But he didn’t make his recordings alone, and they could not have achieved any success without the contributions of Noel and Mitch".