Love Proceeds With Court Case Vs. Universal

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A day after telling the California State Legislature a law locking musicians into recording contracts amounts to indentured servitude, rock star Courtney Love took her case to Superior Court yesterday (Sept. 6), according to The Hollywood Reporter. Love is attempting to break her contract with Vivendi Universal. She has delivered only two of the seven albums she promised when she signed with Geffen Records in 1992.

Geffen was later sold to MCA, and after subsequent corporate shuffling, Love found herself signed with Vivendi Universal, the world's biggest record company. Love is among a number of recording artists seeking to break contracts and have the freedom to negotiate less restrictive deals to capitalize on their success.

Both sides delivered arguments during Thursday's hearing before Judge Fumiko Wasserman. "We're with a company we didn't want to do business with," said Love's attorney, Barry Cappello, referring to the sale of her contract to Vivendi. "Geffen cannot assign it. They do not have a right to assign it to a company we didn't want to do business with."

A lawyer for Vivendi Universal countered that Love's initial contract with Geffen is enforceable. Attorney Russell Frackman also challenged Love's constitutional challenge to a 1987 amendment exempting musicians from the state's labor laws.
"Miss Love may not be happy with what the Legislature did 15 years ago, and she may want to change it," Frackman said. "But a constitutional challenge is not the way to do it. It is not this court's job to act as a super legislature."

Wasserman took the arguments under submission and said he would issue a ruling before an Oct. 17 status conference.

In June, Love won an injunction against the release of a song recorded by her husband Kurt Cobain with Nirvana before his death in 1994. Love and the band's two surviving members, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, are facing off in court over control of a studio recording of the song, a 45-track box set, and ultimately, the legacy of the group itself.