Lawsuit Over Beatles' 'First Known' Recording Heads to Trial After Judge's Ruling

An eight-year legal battle with Universal Music over a long-lost demo tape held by a famed Abbey Road sound engineer is finally set for a showdown in court.   A Los Angeles judge says Universal Music Group (UMG) can keep pursuing a legal battle demanding the return of what the label has called the “first known Beatles recording” from the estate of a famed Abbey Road sound engineer.

In a decision this month, Judge David Cowan ruled that Calderstone Productions — a UMG unit that administers the Beatles catalog — had legal standing to seek to recover the rare tape from the estate of Geoff Emerick, who the label claims stole it decades ago.
The Beatles records

Emerick’s estate, which says he rescued a piece of history from destruction, had argued UMG couldn’t show a “chain of title” to prove it was the rightful legal successor to Abbey Road, meaning it lacked ownership rights in the first place.

But in an Oct. 16 ruling, Judge Cowan rejected that argument: “Calderstone shows how the chain of title gives it the right to pursue its underlying conversion claim,” the judge said, using the legal term for the civil law equivalent of theft.

The decision, exclusively reported by Billboard, sets the stage for a trial early next year over the big remaining issue: Whether Abbey Road legally abandoned ownership of the tape. The estate says it was basically thrown away and that Emerick saved it. UMG argues back that it was always company property: “At issue in this action is a highly valuable artifact of rock and roll history that was stolen.”

But before then, the estate is already pushing the judge to reconsider his ruling. In a motion last week, lead counsel Kenneth Fruendlich argued that the decision “rewrites” the decades-old documents at the heart of the case and would create “a manifest injustice.” That motion remains pending.

Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Judge Cowan’s decision.

Source: billboard.com/Bill Donahue

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