Soundgarden Drop Charity Concert Lawsuit Against Vicky Cornell
Barely more than two months after filing papers to countersue Chris Cornell’s widow for allegedly misusing funds from a charity concert, the surviving members of Soundgarden have now dropped that lawsuit.
In May, band members Kim Thayil (guitar), Matt Cameron (drums), and Ben Shepherd (Bass) fired the next shot in their ongoing legal battle with Vicky Cornell, claiming that they had an “oral agreement” with Vicky to perform for free at a 2019 concert to raise money for The Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation — but that no one actually knows who got the money accrued by the show.
Cornell’s attorney, Marty Singer, subsequently sent Soundgarden a letter calling the accusations “shameful and objectively frivolous,” as well as “financial information pertaining to the event,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. And now Soundgarden, in turn, have filed a first amended complaint “to dismiss the Ninth and Tenth Causes of Action and certain related factual allegations relating to the January 16, 2019 charity concert: ‘I am the Highway: A Tribute to Chris Cornell.’” The filing goes on to say that although the band still believes those charges to be “well-founded,” they’ve agreed to dismiss them “for reasons communicated” to Singer and his team.
Says Singer:
“When we threatened Soundgarden with the undisputed facts that their claims concerning Vicky Cornell and the Cornell Charitable Foundation were disgraceful and fabricated by requesting the court sanction them for their appalling conduct, they caved in and agreed to drop their claims. We were looking forward to having the court make Soundgarden and their attorneys accountable for their shameful conduct, but they instead backed off their meritless claims since they knew they would lose the Rule 11 motion, which is used in court to punish and deter parties and their attorneys from pursuing objectively frivolous claims.”
The legal issues between Cornell and the band began after the three musicians filed a suit alleging that Vicky is withholding Chris Cornell’s final recordings, which were intended for a Soundgarden album they’d still like to release. Vicky, meanwhile, says that the band has been withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties due to the Cornell estate (i.e., her and Chris’ children) as an attempt to bully her into turning over the recordings.
Last month, Soundgarden’s members engaged in social media activity which suggested they may be up to something. We still don’t know precisely what that something is, though.
You can read The Hollywood Reporter‘s entire story on the lawsuit here.
