[EXCLUSIVE] Pharrell & Robin Thicke Fear They Will Be Beiber’ed, Plead w/ Court to Seal Depositions
theJasmineBRAND.com has exclusively learned, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams fear they will be ridiculed and their careers will be ruined — just like Justin Bieber — and they are pleading with the court to seal their video depositions.
Last year, both artists filed a preemptive lawsuit over their song after Marvin Gaye’s estate reportedly threatened action against Thicke and his co-creators because “Blurred Lines” is too similar to Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” (and also Funkadelic’s “Sexy Ways”).
Gaye’s children countersued Thicke and his producers claiming the song was stolen. The legal battle has been going on for months and the musicians have had to sit down for video taped depos.
Then on September 11th, Thicke & Williams filed docs in the case pleading with the court to seal their depos. They state that they are both successful musicians and their activities are the focus of public scrutiny and media attention.
They explain that they are concerned about potential improper use of their testimony and other information to be provided in discovery, and aware of the abuse of videotaped deposition testimony in the media and on the internet on other lawsuits (e.g., just Google “Justin Bieber deposition”).
They accuse Marvin Gaye’s family of submitting to the court both the video and written depos, despite them not having any relevance to the issues at hand. The musicians say this was done solely to distract attention from the real issues and to embarrass, harass, and annoy them.
Thicke & Williams explain that
videotaped excerpts of celebrity depositions from a number of lawsuits has been the subject of untoward media exploitation and public scrutiny, including on the internet (YouTube, etc.), for reasons unrelated to the public’s interest in the underlying legal proceedings.
For example, Plaintiffs request that the Court take judicial notice of the wide dissemination of certain deposition testimony that pop star Justin Bieber gave that has “made the rounds” of the internet and other media for reasons unrelated to the underlying legal case in which Mr. Bieber was deposed. See part of Bieber’s deposition below.
They are pleading with the judge to order the video depos be sealed … claiming
if those materials are unsealed, are almost certain to end up posted on the internet for years
to come, and with no legitimate connection to whether one song infringed another.
Read the Exclusive Court Documents.
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