Universal Music Group responded to Fred Durst’s fraud lawsuit for the first time last week, saying the Limp Bizkit frontman’s allegations against the company were “based on a fallacy” while motioning for the case to be tossed.
“Plaintiffs’ entire narrative that UMG tried to conceal royalties is a fiction,” the company said in their motion on Friday.
The response comes over a month after Durst first sued the world’s largest music company in October, alleging that the record company had “designed and implemented royalty software and systems that were deliberately designed to conceal artists’ royalties and keep those profits for itself.”
Durst and his attorneys claimed that UMG owed the band as much as $200 million, and that he’d “not seen a dime” in royalties before their inquiries. The suit accused UMG of fraud, negligent misrepresentation and copyright infringement. The suit also demanded Durst and the band receive full ownership of their music.
In the response, however, UMG said that the dispute started with a director at the company reaching out to Limp Bizkit‘s manager over email seeking to set up a vendor profile so the band could get their recording royalties. The business manager had told the UMG director that most of the band members had sold off their royalty shares, but over a year later, he emailed again, clarifying he was referring to publishing royalties, not the recordings. UMG said the email communications, which they included in their reply, “eviscerate” the fraud claims. (A rep for Durst didn’t immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
UMG maintains that they began the process soon after and paid the band over $1 million in back royalties while giving Durst’s record label Flawless Records $2.3 million, which the company said was all of the “outstanding royalties and profits.”
“Despite these payments, on September 30, 2024, Plaintiffs served UMG with a formal Notice of Rescission of the Flip Agreement, the Recording Agreement, and the Flawless Agreement,” the company wrote of Durst’s decision to sue. “When UMG rejected the Rescission Notice, Plaintiffs filed the present action, asserting no less than 15 state (and one federal) putative claims for relief.”
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