Nashville at law: Clint Black accuses manager of royalty, label shenanigans

For country star Clint Black, it must feel like déjà-vu all over again.

In 1992, as his musical career was enjoying early success, Black fell out with his manager, ZZ Top co-founder Bill Ham. He filed a lawsuit over royalties and publishing rights, eventually spending seven months mired in litigation before reaching a settlement and signing on with a new manager/accountant, Charles Sussman.

Now Black is suing Sussman and his Music Row firm, Gudvi, Sussman & Oppenheim. Once again, he has a grievance about royalties. In a complaint filed Nov. 7 in Davidson County Chancery Court, Black asserts that Sussman and his firm "repeatedly engaged in self-dealing, negligence, and/or gross negligence" in steering his finances.

The lawsuit says Sussman convinced Black to assign more than $500,000 in royalties to Equity Records, an independent record label in which both Sussman and Black have minority ownership. Black says he got nothing in return for this arrangement and was, in effect, "providing Equity an interest-free, unsecured loan."

Further, he claims, Sussman was taking monthly payments from Equity without his knowledge. And Sussman also had him sign more than $1 million worth of personal guaranties for Equity, he says.

Everything still might have turned out happily, since Equity's roster of recording artists included the up-and-coming band Little Big Town. Black says he had been told that Little Big Town was signed to a long-term deal with Equity, but last April, soon after the group released A Place to Land – the follow-up to its platinum-selling 2005 album The Road to Here – it left Equity for Capitol Records. Black claims Sussman kept him in the dark about the terms of Little Big Town's contract.

Black seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Samuel D. Lipshie and Melissa Ballengee Alexander of Boult, Cummings, Conners & Berry are representing him.

Here are some other civil legal cases of note for the period of Nov. 6 – 13:

Davidson County Circuit Court

[Next of kin to alleged rape victim] v. Jason E. Tucker et al. Tucker, whose Omega Security firm attracted public and police scrutiny after he shot a man in the leg at a hotel in 2005 (though a jury acquitted him of aggravated assault), stands accused of rape in civil court following another hotel incident that happened a year ago.

After an encounter with a 16-year-old girl who was staying with friends at the Liberty Inn Hotel on Brick Church Pike, Tucker told police that the two had engaged in a consensual sexual encounter. Shortly after the incident, Tucker was charged with aggravated statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Now the girl's family tells a different story. It says the security guard escorted her from the room after flashing a badge and saying he would take her "downtown," but then took her into an office, handcuffed her and held a Taser gun against her head while forcing her to have sex. The family seeks at least $1 million in damages. Plaintiff's attorneys: David L. King and Chad M. Ross of King-Solomon, Attorneys at Law in Nashville.

United States District Court

Greg Mitchell et al. v. Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. et al. Lawsuit filed Nov. 6. Just two days after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was investigating safety issues with the Yamaha Rhino off-road vehicle, a Clarksville family sued over a 2005 rollover accident that left a child with severe injuries and caused the amputation of four toes on her right foot.

The complaint accuses Yamaha of failing to correct known design flaws that made the vehicle prone to rolling over, and it seeks punitive damages on the grounds that the manufacturer acted "with malice and/or in reckless disregard of the consequences." Plaintiff's attorney: Mark P. Chalos, with the Nashville office of plaintiffs' law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.