The Beatles Sue Record Label Giants

Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr plus the families of John Lennon and George Harrison allege that the companies fraudulently “pocketed millions of dollars” from the band between 1994 and 1999.

The lawsuit was launched back in December and claims that the labels falsely classified some copies of Beatles albums as faulty, but went on to sell them.

EMI requested for the case to be thrown out of the New York State Supreme Court last week, but this was rejected.

The surviving Beatles members plus their estates are seeking the minimum of $25million in damages.

Elsewhere in the lawsuit, the band claim that the labels wrongly counted the number of albums sold and labelled some albums destined for the shelves as promotional copies.

EMI and Capitol have refuted the claims saying that there was enough details of the allegations to warrant any action.

It’s not the first time The Beatles have had a run-in with EMI and Capitol. In 1979 the band claimed that they had been underpaid $20million.

This was eventually settled a decade later when the band were given higher royalty rates.

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