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Legal
Prince ordered to pay $4 million in damages to perfume company
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 16 April 2012
Prince was ordered to pay just under $4 million to a perfume company on Friday after a judge upheld an earlier court ruling that the singer made false promises to the perfume maker, which resulted in the firm investing millions into making a Prince-based perfume the pop star had no intention to help promote.
As previously reported, Prince was sued in 2008 by Revelations Perfume And Cosmetics Inc, which claimed that the singer failed to fulfil promotional commitments he had made to help the company flog its smelly stuff, which was named after his 2006 album ‘3121’. Revelations claimed that Prince had agreed to promote the product, and also to sell it at his live shows, but that neither of those things happened, making the venture an expensive flop.
A New York court hearing first sided with the perfume maker last September, but the whole matter was still to go before another judge. Meanwhile Prince’s legal reps said there was no evidence that Revelations’ decision to make the ‘3121’ perfume was directly motivated by the singer’s promises to undertake promotional duties. But said judge ignored those pleas last week and ordered Prince to pay the perfume company $3.95 million in damages (though declined the claimant’s request for punitive damages too).
Team Prince were no impressed with the ruling, and pledged to keep fighting, with the singer’s legal reps telling The Hollywood Reporter: “This was a default judgment, not based on any trial on the merits and without any ability of Prince to challenge the factual assertions of the plaintiff. The judge’s refusal to set aside the default for good cause is currently being appealed. Every ‘fact’ in the judge’s opinion was an adoption of the assertions made by the plaintiff due to said default judgment and are vehemently denied by Prince”.
