Independent rock label Victory Records has extended its Hawthorne Heights litigation by suing the record company established by the emo band's frontman JT Woodruff.
As previously reported, the US band fell out with Victory Records, the label they themselves were signed to, last year, and sued the record company and its boss Tony Brummel for breach of contract, seemingly in a bid to release themselves from their contractual commitments to the independent. The band subsequently signed a new recording deal with EMI's Virgin Records division.
But a court ruled back in September that the band remained bound by its contract with Victory, in theory barring them from entering into their new deal with EMI. Band members have pledged to appeal that ruling, though in the meantime Victory have begun legal proceedings against EMI, claiming senior execs there persuaded band members to launch the original breach of contract lawsuit in a bid to free them from their Victory commitments (so the major could sign them).
Anyway, all of that is still rumbling on, but now Brummel has begun litigation against Carbon Copy Media, the record label run by Woodruff and his business partner Mark Daily. Victory entered into a distribution deal with Carbon Copy, distributing releases from bands Ellison and Signal Home, and Woodruff's pre-HH outfit A Day In The Life. Victory claim they spent more than $200,000 in connection with the deal, but that Carbon Copy then broke off communications with them, basically when Hawthorne Heights cut off its relationships with the label. Victory say that puts Carbon Copy in breach of contract, and prevents Victory from recouping its investment in the distribution deal. To that end they are suing for $200K plus legal costs.
No comment from the HH camp on any of this so far.