US court declines to dismiss lawsuit over Sam Smith and Normani song — Rolling Stone
A federal court in Los Angeles, United States, denied Sam Smith and Normani’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit over possible copyright infringement in the song Dancing With a Stranger. A jury must consider disputed issues in the case, Rolling Stone reports.
Dispute over the hook
The plaintiffs, songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlao, associated with the group Sound and Color, claim that Sam Smith and Normani used the hook from their composition Dancing With a Stranger, released in 2015. Smith and Normani’s song was released in 2019.
In a 27-page ruling, Judge Wesley L. Hsu said the case still involves material disputed issues concerning the works’ striking similarity and the independent creation of the composition. The judge rejected the defendants’ approach, which proposed comparing pitch sequences, rhythm, metric placement and melodic contour separately. According to him, excessively breaking works down into individual elements could make any two compositions appear dissimilar.
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Arguments of the parties
The lawsuit was filed in March 2022. It was dismissed the following year but later reinstated after an appeal. In July, lawyers for Smith, Normani and other defendants, including Universal Music Group, again asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the plaintiffs’ experts had not established the required striking similarity.
The defense also argued that the plaintiffs’ composition contains unauthorized samples from The Ha Dance by Masters at Work and Think (About It) by Lyn Collins, meaning copyright protection does not extend to the relevant parts of the work. The judge concluded that the defendants had not proven that the plaintiffs’ song originated from these allegedly unauthorized samples.
Hsu also said that the defendants’ claim that they independently created the song without access to the plaintiffs’ work must be assessed by a jury. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Alfred J. Fluehr, said the musicological issues in the case should be decided by a jury.
