Label Sues 30 Seconds To Mars... For $30 Million!
Hollywood star Jared Leto's band 30 Seconds To Mars is being sued by EMI for breach of contract and failing to deliver a new album.
The amount the record label is demanding is a rather ridiculous $30 million, or precisely one million dollars per second.
The band claim they were within their rights to break the deal because they haven't received any payment from their two million album sales.
"As you may have heard, we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000," Leto said in a lengthy statement.
"We had been signed to our record contract for 9 years. Basically, under California law one cannot be bound to a contract for more than seven years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.
"Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for 'quitting'. We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void.
He continued: "If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of two million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren't they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still $1.4 million in debt to them is even crazier."
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