Limp Bizkit and frontman, Fred Durst, have taken Universal Music Group (UMG) to state court in California, after a federal court declined to hear most of the band’s complaints against the record company.
The band filed a lawsuit on Monday (March 24) in the Superior Court in Los Angeles County, alleging breach of contract, fraudulent concealment, breach of fiduciary duty, intentional misrepresentation, and promissory fraud on the part of UMG, among other allegations.
The band’s complaint asks the court to declare that the contracts between the band and UMG are no longer valid, and for damages of no less than $23.45 million, plus “special damages” of at least $10 million.
The complaint makes many of the same allegations that Limp Bizkit and Durst made in their original filing in a federal court last October, in which the band alleged that it hadn’t been paid royalties despite selling some 45 million albums under contracts going as far back as 1996.
It says that UMG informed Durst that he and his bandmates had not yet received royalties because the record company was still earning back $43 million in various advances it gave to the band under those contracts.
Durst and Limp Bizkit’s complaint says that this arrangement was part of an amendment to a 1996 agreement between Limp Bizkit and Flip Records, a contract that Interscope inherited and that the original contract had them splitting net profits 50-50. It alleges that Durst and Limp Bizkit “never agreed to or even discussed” the amendment that switched the deal to a model where the label would recoup its investment before paying out royalties.
Furthermore, they allege that it was their understanding that the deal, signed in the 1990s, gave them 50-50 profit sharing on music sold through means not covered in the contract, for instance via streaming.
The complaint says that Limp Bizkit’s music was streamed 1.7 billion times worldwide in 2024, up from 1.3 billion the year before.
“Currently, the band is selling out arenas and headlining major festivals,” states the band’s complaint, reviewed by MBW. “Despite this tremendous ‘come back,’ the band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action against UMG, leading one to ask how on earth that could possibly be true.”
That original federal lawsuit has now been pared down to a copyright infringement case. Limp Bizkit says that it notified UMG last summer that it was cancelling its deal with Interscope, along with another agreement between Interscope and Durst’s Flawless Records. As a result, they argue, Interscope’s continued distribution of Limp Bizkit and Flawless music amounts to copyright infringement.
On March 17, Judge Percy Anderson of the US District Court for the Central District of California tossed out all of the claims Limp Bizkit made against UMG, except the copyright infringement claim, on the grounds that the non-copyright claims belonged in a state court. Under US law, copyright is a federal matter, so Judge Anderson allowed those to carry on. He gave UMG until April 7 to respond in writing to the copyright claims.
Those copyright claims hinge on Durst and Limp Bizkit convincing the California court that their allegations have merit, and therefore their cancellation of the Interscope contracts is valid.
That argument failed in federal court. In January, Judge Anderson ruled that nullifying the contracts would require “a total failure of performance” on the part of UMG in carrying out those contracts; UMG’s delayed payment of some royalties owed to Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records doesn’t meet that standard, not least because Interscope “paid millions” in advances to Limp Bizkit and invested substantial amounts into their music, the judge concluded.
In its response to the federal lawsuit, UMG called the allegations “fiction.” The company said it had invested millions into the production and promotion of Limp Bizkit’s music, and that royalties were meant to flow once the investment had been recouped.
UMG said that in the summer of 2024, it paid out $1.04 million in back royalties to Limp Bizkit and $2.35 million in back profit participation to Flawless Records. Durst and Limp Bizkit say those payments only happened once a new band manager demanded access to UMG’s portal to view royalty statements.
“Despite this tremendous ‘come back,’ the band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action against UMG, leading one to ask how on earth that could possibly be true.”
Limp Bizkit, in a complaint filed with the California Superior Court
However, UMG said that an executive in the Royalties Department had reached out to Limp Bizkit’s business manager a year before the disagreement began and advised the manager of the need to “set up a vendor profile for Limp Bizkit” so that the company could “start making royalty payments” to the band.
UMG said that this “eviscerates [the] claim” that it had kept silent about Limp Bizkit’s royalties until after the business manager began looking into the matter.
The band’s complaint before the California court says they were informed that UMG failed to notify them of royalties owed because of “a ‘one-off mistake’ due to an error with UMG’s new software.”
The complaint states, “Plaintiffs do not believe that they were not paid due to an allegedly ‘one-off’ mistake or software issue, given the fact that there is no rational explanation for how this alleged mistake affected two completely separate accounts [Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records].”
There will likely also be disagreement between Limp Bizkit and UMG over the choice of a California court as the venue to resolve the allegations. In its federal court filings, UMG said the contracts with Limp Bizkit and Flawless require disputes to be settled in a New York court.Music Business Worldwide
