More fun on the old Victory Records / Hawthorne Heights dispute. As previously reported, the US emo band have fallen out with the independent label and announced earlier this year that they were ending their relationship with the record company, accusing Victory of mis-representing them and failing to come through on royalty payments. However, when the case went to court last month a judge dismissed the band's allegations that the label was in breach of contract, and ruled that they are obliged to fulfill their outstanding obligations to the label according to that contract, which is another two albums if I remember rightly.
Anyway, in the latest development, Victory has filed a lawsuit against EMI and their Virgin US division alleging that they induced the band to break their contractual obligations or, to be precise, that they are guilty of "tortuous interference with contractual relations", which sounds almost painful. The lawsuit claims that Virgin US President Jason Flom and the label's Business Affairs chief Jason Kempler encouraged the band to declare themselves free of their Victory Records contract so that they could sign them to a new presumably lucrative record deal. The independent is demanding $10 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages off the major for trying to steal their best selling act.
The Hollywood Reporter quotes an EMI spokesman responding thus: "We're confident there is no basis for a suit. Though we'll know more just as soon as we figure out what a 'tortuous interference' is". Well, they said some of that.