ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Sagan
- Edgardo Ramos
- 1:15-cv-04025
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 27
In ABKCO Music v. Sagan, Judge Ramos denied a new trial, granted attorneys’ fees and costs with a 60% fee reduction, and entered a $52,689.12 costs judgment.
The plaintiffs, who were judgment creditors, received a $52,689.12 costs judgment and a reduced attorneys’ fee award. William Sagan, Norton LLC, and the Bill Graham Archives entities named in the caption were the defendants and judgment debtors against whom the judgment was entered.
What happened
ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Sagan involved copyright claims concerning concert recordings that defendants made available for download and streaming. After a jury awarded the plaintiffs $189,500 for infringement of 197 musical works, the plaintiffs sought a new trial on damages and attorneys’ fees and costs.
The plaintiffs argued that the jury’s less-than-one-hour deliberation was unfair because the trial occurred as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, and because one juror expressed concern about the health risks. They also sought fees and costs as prevailing parties. The defendants opposed a new trial and argued that the requested fee award should be reduced, including because the damages were far lower than the amount the plaintiffs had sought and because of financial disparities.
Judge Ramos denied the motion for a new trial, granted the motion for attorneys’ fees and costs, and reduced the requested attorneys’ fee award by 60%, resulting in $2,420,226 in fees. The March 23, 2021 judgment separately awarded the plaintiffs $52,689.12 in costs against the defendants and directed that a certified copy could be registered in other federal districts despite the parties’ pending appeals.
The detailed version
- ABKCO Music, Inc. v. Sagan · No. 1:15-cv-04025
- Edgardo Ramos
- Mar. 23, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants infringed copyrights in nearly 200 musical works by making concert recordings available for downloading and streaming and by manufacturing physical records containing some of the works. The defendants argued that their compulsory mechanical licenses were valid. A compulsory mechanical license is a limited statutory authorization to reproduce and distribute certain musical works if specified requirements are met.
In an earlier summary-judgment ruling, the court held that the defendants had not shown that they possessed valid mechanical licenses. The court identified several independent grounds, including that audiovisual recordings were not eligible for mechanical licenses under Section 115 of the Copyright Act, that the defendants had not shown that the recordings were made with performers’ consent, and that some licenses were not filed before distribution. The court also found willful infringement for 167 works and left the question of willfulness for 30 other works for trial.
After a nine-day trial, the jury awarded the plaintiffs $189,500 in statutory damages for infringement of 197 musical works. The jury found regular copyright infringement for the 30 works for which the defendants’ state of mind had been at issue.
Motions Addressed in the November 5, 2020 Opinion and Order
The plaintiffs moved for a new damages trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59. They argued that the worsening COVID-19 pandemic made the trial fundamentally unfair because the jury deliberated for less than an hour, awarded relatively low statutory damages, and included a juror who expressed concern about the pandemic and his mother’s health. No party objected to the juror’s comments or sought to remove him, and the court had told the jury that it could deliberate as long as it wished.
The court denied the new-trial motion. It found no sufficient basis to conclude that the verdict was a serious error or a miscarriage of justice. The court emphasized that it had not pressured the jury to finish quickly, that the jury’s damages choices did not show that it simply selected the easiest result, and that Juror Number 5 said the jurors intended to perform their duty fairly.
The plaintiffs also moved for attorneys’ fees and costs under Section 505 of the Copyright Act. The court found that the plaintiffs were prevailing parties because they succeeded on the infringement claims and obtained findings of willful infringement for most of the works. The court further found that the defendants’ position concerning artist consent to the original recordings was objectively unreasonable because the defendants lacked admissible evidence supporting consent, despite having reason to question whether consent existed. The court also considered the number of willful infringements and the deterrence and compensation purposes of fee awards.
The court nevertheless reduced the requested attorneys’ fee award by 60%. It considered the financial disparity between the parties and the substantial gap between the damages sought and the $189,500 awarded at trial. The plaintiffs had requested $6,050,565.50 in attorneys’ fees and $52,689.12 in costs. After the reduction, the court awarded $2,420,226 in attorneys’ fees. The November 5 opinion and order granted the motion for attorneys’ fees and costs but made the attorneys’ fees subject to the 60% reduction.
March 23, 2021 Judgment
The March 23 judgment stated that, pursuant to the November 5 opinion and order, the plaintiffs had judgment against the defendants for $52,689.12 in costs. The clerk was directed to issue a certified copy of the judgment in a form that could be registered in other federal districts without further delay, notwithstanding the parties’ pending cross-appeals.
Disposition
The court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a new trial, granted the plaintiffs’ motion for attorneys’ fees and costs subject to a 60% reduction in attorneys’ fees, and entered judgment for $52,689.12 in costs. Judge Edgardo Ramos signed the March 23, 2021 judgment.
Read the full 27-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.