Kesha Loses Another Legal Round Against Dr. Luke

Summary: A New York judge has denied Kesha’s attempt at amending a complaint against her music producer Dr. Luke.

On Tuesday, pop star Kesha was dealt another bad note. A New York judge denied her attempt to break her contract with music producer, Dr. Luke, a man Kesha says abused her for years.

Kesha, 30, has had a string of top 10 singles which include hits such as “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R,” and she has written songs for artists such as Britney Spears. The entertainer was discovered as a teenager by Dr. Luke, and he convinced her to drop out of school and move to Los Angeles. That’s when he signed her to his label, Kemosabe, a subsidiary of Sony Music, and together, they built her illustrious career.

In 2013, Kesha shocked her fans and music insiders when she filed a lawsuit against Dr. Luke, wanting to escape her contract. In the lawsuit, she claimed that he had sexually and emotionally abused her for years, and she stated that he often fed her drugs and made mean comments about her appearance.

Since going public with her allegations, the public has generally sided with Kesha, and stars such as Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson have come to her defense. Kesha’s young fans were especially moved. They had even started a social media campaign called “#FreeKesha,” begging the courts to release her from her contract.

Unfortunately, the #FreeKesha campaign did not work, and the pop star has fared poorly in court. This week’s most recent ruling by Kornreich said that Kesha’s claims could not go further in court because the artist herself had failed to perform her own responsibilities. This includes not paying Dr. Luke almost $1.3 million in royalties.

In 2014, Dr. Luke had filed a complaint against Kesha that stated she was in breach of her contract because she had failed to finish a third album as required. Kesha countersued and asked to be released from her contract on the basis of verbal abuse and rape.

Their feud resulted in a stalling of Kesha’s career because she was not able to make new music without working with Dr. Luke. Kesha’s lawyer at the time, celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, asked the courts to grant her an injunction so that she could record independently, but in February of 2016, Judge Kornreich denied the request. In April of that year, Kornreich dismissed Kesha’s countersuit, and she pointed out that the two instances of alleged sexual assault occurred before Kesha had signed her Kemosabe contract.

After things looked dire for Kesha in court, the entertainer dropped her lawsuit, and she began work on a third album. However, her lawyers said that Dr. Luke is now sabotaging her, interfering with her day to day and delaying the release of the album. Dr. Luke denies this charge, and he has also denied all of Kesha’s abuse claims.

In January, Kesha’s legal team tried to amend her original counterclaim so that she could break free from Dr. Luke.

“You can get a divorce from an abusive spouse,” the countersuit said. “You can dissolve a partnership if the relationship becomes irreconcilable. The same opportunity — to be liberated from the physical, emotional, and financial bondage of a destructive relationship — should be available to a recording artist.”

Dr. Luke appears to refuse to ever want to #FreeKesha, and his legal camp has countered that she is trying to litigate her dispute through the media.

“It was obviously designed to garner sympathetic headlines for Defendant, and further tarnish Plaintiffs, based upon false assertions and blatant mischaracterizations,” Dr. Luke’s attorneys said.

Kesha is represented by Daniel Petrocelli at O’Melveny & Myers.

Dr. Luke is represented by Christine Lepera at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP.