Cher has won a lawsuit against Mary Oliver – the widow of Sonny Bono – over royalties in relation to the songs released by Sonny And Cher.
As part of their divorce settlement on 1978, the ‘Believe’ singer was granted a permanent 50 per cent cut of all publishing revenues of the songs that Sonny and Cher had recorded together during the time that they were married.
After Bono’s death in 1998, Cher continued to receive her royalty payments from the late singer’s estate up until 2016. This ended when Oliver argued that she did not need to pay the pop icon her royalties due to the copyright law’s termination right — a provision of federal law that allows songwriters and their heirs to win back control of their intellectual property rights decades after they gave them away.
Per Stereogum, in 2021 Bono’s estate stopped paying Cher her royalties, which led her to file a lawsuit later that year.
Now, in a decision issued yesterday (May 29), Judge John A. Kronstadt sided with the ‘If I Can Turn Back Time’ singer and ruled that the termination rights did not trump the duo’s 1978 settlement and that Oliver must continue paying the superstar her cut under the couple’s decades-old divorce settlement (Per Billboard).
Allegedly, more than $400,000 (£315,000) in royalties are owed to Cher since the dispute began.
In other news, Robbie Williams recently opened up about his awkward and “rude” encounter with Cher, saying it left him “headbutting the wall” afterwards.