Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine have been ordered to pay over $25 million to their former business partner Steven Lamar.
In 2016, Lamar filed a $100 million lawsuit against Dre and Jimmy claiming he was screwed out of royalties for the design of early Beats headphones. Lamar accused the two of breaching the terms of their original contract; however, the defendants argued that Lamar was only involved in the creation of one model, for which he had already been compensated. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury didn’t agree.
According to Billboard, the jury decided Lamar had fulfilled his contract and was owed $25,247,350 in royalties for his work on three Beats models.
“For anybody who has a great idea and brings it to a company and then doesn’t get the recognition or credit that they’re due … what this jury verdict says is, if that happens to you and you’re a little person, you can go into court and have a jury of American citizens determine whether you’re right or wrong. And if you’re right, you get the credit that you’re owed,” Lamar’s attorney Brian Melton told Billboard. “That’s what I felt when I heard the jury verdict. It indicated four years of hard work in this case of standing side-by-side with Mr. Lamar, through the ups and downs, and going against one of the biggest companies in the world with some of the best lawyers in the world.”
(source: billboard)
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