In Limp Bizkit’s $200M Lawsuit Against UMG, Judge Brings Key Claims Back Into Play

The battle is far from over, but the ruling effectively revived the band's demand to void its contracts with the music giant — a central accusation in the blockbuster lawsuit.

Mar 19, 2025 - 20:14

In Limp Bizkit’s $200M Lawsuit Against UMG, Judge Brings Key Claims Back Into Play

A federal judge is shaking up Limp Bizkit’s $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), issuing a procedural ruling that sends much of the contentious legal battle to state court but allows copyright claims to move ahead toward trial.

In a decision issued Tuesday (March 19), Judge Percy Anderson said he would decline to exercise jurisdiction over the majority of the lawsuit’s accusations against UMG, including its core claim that the band is entitled to a ruling of “rescission” that voids its deals with the label and allows it to take back copyrights to its music.

Citing concerns about “economy, convenience [and] fairness,” the judge ruled that those claims must instead be handled by state courts in New York or California. But he denied UMG’s motion to dismiss the band’s claim of copyright infringement, allowing those claims to proceed in his court.

Though hardly a slam dunk, the ruling is a positive development for Limp Bizkit. In an earlier ruling, Judge Anderson had outright rejected the rescission claim — a holding that also meant the band couldn’t sue the label for copyright infringement. In the new decision, the judge left the question of rescission open for a future ruling by a state court, meaning that claim — and the lucrative copyright claims — are back in play.

Though the copyright claims will now move forward in his court, the judge has repeatedly stressed that those allegations can only succeed if the band’s contracts with UMG are rescinded and it regains its ownership of the copyrights. The judge could potentially pause the case while the rescission issue is litigated in state court, but he gave no indication that he would do so in Tuesday’s decision.

Frontman Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit sued in October, claiming the band had “never received any royalties from UMG” despite its huge success over the years: “The band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action.” The band argued that the damages total owed by UMG would “easily surpass $200 million” when the case was over.

But in January, Judge Anderson sided with UMG on the core question of rescission. He ruled that the band had in fact been “paid millions in advances” and that UMG had fronted “substantial sums” to record and distribute Limp Bizkit’s albums — meaning the band didn’t deserve the drastic remedy of terminating the decades-old deals in their entirety.

“Plaintiffs seek rescission of contracts that have governed the parties’ relationship beginning in 1996 — nearly 30 years — because the agreements should be rescinded as fraudulently induced,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the type of ‘substantial’ or ‘total failure’ in the performance of the contracts that could support rescission of the parties’ agreements.”

Following that ruling, Limp Bizkit responded by filing an updated version of the lawsuit. In it, the band added new factual allegations to support their demand for rescission, including that its former manager had fraudulently induced them to sign agreements, engaging in “wrongful self-dealing” while the band was “paid nothing.”

In Tuesday’s decision, Judge Anderson said those new allegations would require the kind of detailed analysis of novel state-law issues that a state-level court was better suited to address.

“The rescission claims, on which the copyright claims depend, … require an analysis of state law of both New York and California law involving facts and law that are distinct from those necessary to adjudicate the copyright claim,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs’ effort to rescind the agreements as a result of the alleged fraud committed by their former business manager appears to also raise complex and novel theories for which there is limited controlling legal precedent.”