Outside Counsel

I love David Siegel's New York State Law Digest, a chatty little leaflet that summarizes the more significant recent decisions handed down by the courts of the Empire State, but sometimes it glides over the important details. In the most recent issue, for example, Siegel reports on King v. Fox, 7 NY3rd 181, which holds that under "rare" circumstances an "unconscionable" fee agreement can be ratified by the client. Siegel likes the case because it employs certification of a question by the Second Circuit to the Court of Appeals, one of his favorite toys, and, I suppose, for the esoterica of it-- how often is something like that ever going to come up? My interest was piqued, however, by the bland description of the facts he related: "The background of the case was royalty arrangements P had made with MCA after P joined a band as both songwriter and artist (performer)." First of all, I love the snide parenthetical. This is a guy who probably doesn't have a lot of rock'n'roll in his collection of 78s, dig? I wanted to shake him: "Who? What band? Tell me!". Instead, I had to go online. For the record, it's Edward C. King, and the band was Lynyrd Skynyrd. "King contributed to writing, arranging and performing some of its most popular songs, including, "Sweet Home Alabama," says the Court. These were some heavy royalties, and the lawyer cut himself in for a nice slice in perpetuity. The Second Circuit has remanded the matter to the district court for a further hearing on the issue of ratification.

Siegel doesn't even mention that, "During the period from 1974 to 1975, artist's royalties exceeded $1,000,000 per annum. At that time, King received only writer's royalties since artist's royalties were being used to buy out Al Kooper, the band's manager." Isn't that interesting? The guy who wrote "This Diamond Ring", the guy who played the signature organ riff on "Like A Rolling Stone"-- Al Kooper got a million bucks as a buyout from the folks who brought us "Freebird".

This is the sort of rock'n'roll analysis you can get only here at Outside Counsel, people. That's our job. That's what we do.