Guitarist Mick Mars’ lawyer told Rolling Stone magazine that the issue of whether the guitarist was illegally severed from Motley Crue is heading to private arbitration later this year.
Mick Mars’ lawsuit claims:
The Los Angeles judge noted that after the filing, the band took eight months to make a final, sizeable document dump to Mars last month. Citing the delay, the judge ruled that Mars is now entitled to have the band cover his legal bill.
“The requests were not burdensome. Yet, Mars was compelled to file suit, and it appears plain that production would not have occurred without it. Mars is entitled to attorney fees,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant said in his Tuesday ruling.
The judge noted that when the band produced some of the requested documents on November 2, it gave assurances “this was all of the responsive documents” in Mötley Crüe’s possession. That “proved to be wrong,” Judge Chalfant wrote, pointing to articles of incorporation and income tax returns that only arrived among 1,372 pages of records delivered in early December.
“These documents should have been produced without the need for prodding by Mars,” Judge Chalfant wrote. “[The] failure to produce the documents earlier than December 8 amounts to a refusal.”
Though the judge clearly faulted the band, he also ruled Tuesday that Mars’ lawsuit is now “moot.” That means Mars’ more recent requests for subsequent 2023 general ledger entries won’t be granted because they weren’t included on his list of still-outstanding documents filed in November.
The lead lawyer for Mötley Crüe seized on that portion of the ruling Tuesday, declaring victory on behalf of the band. “The case is over. That’s the key takeaway,” attorney Sasha Frid with Miller Barondess said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “By denying the petition as moot and ending the case, the court found that the band turned over all the documents to Mars and there is nothing more to do. The band went above and beyond its obligations by providing much more documents than the statute required – indeed, the court’s decision explained the thousands of documents that the band provided to Mars.”
Read more at Rolling Stone.