Jay-Z and Damon Dash have come to an impasse over their battle regarding the rights to Jay’s classic album, Reasonable Doubt.
The legal beef between the former founders of Roc-A-Fella Records blew up when Damon tried to mint the legendary rapper’s June 1996 debut album as an NFT.
Damon says that he owns 1/3rd of the album, along with Jay-Z and Roc-A-Fella Records’ other co-founder, Kareem “Biggs” Burke.
Damon was attempting to sell his rights in June of 2021, but Jay-Z and his lawyers halted an auction and filed a lawsuit against Damon Dash.
Jay-Z and his legal team said Damon is simply a shareholder in the company RAF, Inc., which owns and controls the Reasonable Doubt asset.
Jay-Z argued that Damon had no right to sell a company asset. The pair and their legal team tried to resolve the issues, but the negotiations officially ended in a stalemate.
“RAF, Inc. and Defendant Damon Dash have reached an impasse and are unable, at this time, to reach a stipulation to resolve their claims and counterclaims,” Jay-Z’s lawyer Alex Spiro revealed.
According to Spiro, they will seek a summary judgment against Damon Dash.
Spiro says a summary judgment would permanently bar Damon Dash from “altering in any way, selling, assigning, pledging, encumbering, contracting with regard to, or in any way disposing of any property interest in the album Reasonable Doubt, including its copyright and including through any means, such as auctioning a non-fungible token (NFT) reflecting, referring, or directing such interest.”
According to Alex Spiro, through litigation, Damon has admitted to “his lack of ownership interest in Reasonable Doubt.”
Jay-Z and his counsel plan to ask a judge to dismiss Damon’s claim that they ruined his deal because there is no “genuine dispute of material fact.”
The legal war will resume in court next month in June when Roc-A-Fella Records will formally file for the summary judgment against Damon Dash.
