News November 23, 2016

US$4M lawsuit victory for A Day To Remember

Former Editor

Following an over five-year legal battle, Victory Records has lost its case against A Day To Remember (ADTR) over the Florida band’s recording contract.

The Chicago-based independent label has been ordered to pay ADTR US$4 million by an Illinois federal jury.

The trial took place over two weeks with the jury finally ruling on Tuesday (November 22) that the band did in fact, fulfil their five-album deal with Victory. The US$4 million covers unpaid royalties and withheld proceeds from digital downloads and merchandise sales.

The jury also awarded ADTR composition rights to their catalogue, but Victory was awarded control of the sound recording copyrights.

Victory has maintained ADTR owed the label two more albums as per their recording commitment to Victory and therefore owed the label money.

The label said it ceased paying royalties when ADTR “interfered” with Victory’s merchandise sales to Hot Topic and served a counterclaim to the lawsuit to withhold payments based on ADTR’s material breaches of their contract – aka, the merchandise and music sold via ADTR.com.

Two months after ADTR filed their initial lawsuit in June 2011, Victory made its first of many settlement offers to resolve this dispute. All offers were rejected by the band and ADTR self-released their ARIA #13 LP Common Courtesy in December 2013.

It was the band’s second highest-charting album in Australia, preceding #1 album Bad Vibrations in September this year, which the band released through Epitaph.

Victory Records is yet to release a statement. However, the band released an official statement today, which can be read in full below:

ADTR bass player Josh Woodard has tweeted the following: