Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) in a federal court in California on Tuesday, October 8 for $200 million for allegedly unpaid royalties. UMG has since responded to the lawsuit with a very short statement that makes their feelings pretty clear: "Plaintiffs' entire narrative that UMG tried to conceal royalties is a fiction."
According to a report by Rolling Stone, UMG claims they paid Limp Bizkit $1 million in back royalties after their manager set up a vendor profile and also gave Durst's record label Flawless Records $2.3 million
"Despite these payments, on September 30, 2024, Plaintiffs served UMG with a formal Notice of Rescission of the Flip Agreement, the Recording Agreement, and the Flawless Agreement," wrote UMG. "When UMG rejected the Rescission Notice, Plaintiffs filed the present action, asserting no less than 15 state (and one federal) putative claims for relief."
UMG is seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit, which a representative for Limp Bizkit is predictably not thrilled about.
"When someone is caught red-handed, their first response is often to hire very expensive outside law firms who first, as a matter of course, try anything to dismiss the suit when they are in trouble with the facts," said the representative. "In this case, we believe UMG is using a typical, formulaic, well-trodden strategy of reaching for any escape route by desperately grasping at technicalities."
As a recap, Durst filed the lawsuit against UMG for allegedly unpaid royalties and asking for a void of Limp Bizkit's contract. The lawsuit also seeks compensation for artists that worked with UMG through Durst's own Flawless Records, as well as asks for the copyrights of all works by Flawless Records artists to be released from UMG to Durst.
The lawsuit claims that Durst never received royalties from UMG, only advances prior to recording the albums. Durst further claims that UMG promised royalties once those advances were recouped, which never happened. Bloomberg further notes that UMG allegedly told Durst's representatives they had spent $43 million on Limp Bizkit's music, and that Durst never received royalty statements because UMG was "not required to provide them since his account was still so far from recoupment."
"Durst explained that he had been informed by UMG that he had not received any royalty statements because UMG told him over the years that it was not required to provide them since his account was still so far from recoupment," wrote Durst's lawyers as reported by Billboard. "Durst's representatives, suspicious that UMG was wrongfully claiming Plaintiffs' accounts were unrecouped, suggested investigating further."
The lawsuit then states Durst's representatives learned Limp Bizkit's accounts had more than $1 million in unpaid royalties, which UMG claimed was a technical error.
The lawsuit reads, in part: "UMG's failure to issue royalty statements in particular from 1997-2004 — the height of the band's fame and during periods in which they made record-breaking sales — with respect to its most popular albums suggests that UMG was intentionally concealing the true amount of sales, and therefore royalties, due and owing to Limp Bizkit in order to unfairly keep those profits for itself."
UMG has not offered a comment on the lawsuit yet.
