George Clinton has won a court judgment throwing out a lawsuit that claimed Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell should be credited as a co-creator of the legendary funk collective’s catalog from the 1970s.
The Thursday (Sept. 4) ruling from a federal judge in Detroit ends litigation brought in 2022 by Judie Worrell, who manages the estate of her late husband (born George Bernard Worrell Jr.). Bernie Worrell, who died of lung cancer in 2016, was the keyboardist for Clinton’s bands Parliament and Funkadelic between 1969 and 1981.
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The lawsuit claimed Worrell was a co-creator and joint owner of 264 songs in the P-Funk catalog, including the Billboard Hot 100 hits “Flash Light” and “One Nation Under a Groove.” The estate wanted a court judgment that would grant it the rights to recorded royalties for all those songs.
But Judge F. Kay Behm says the lawsuit is barred by the statute of limitations for copyright claims, which runs out three years after a person learns that their work has supposedly been infringed.
“Unfortunately for plaintiff, Worrell was not reasonably diligent in protecting his alleged co-authorship or ownership rights for decades,” writes the judge. “Worrell’s ownership claims accrued well before 2020, either when the works were recorded and he was not credited or when Worrell learned that he was not receiving the royalties to which he was allegedly entitled, no later than the late 1980s.”
Clinton’s attorney, Jim Allen, tells Billboard he’s “pleased that the court brought closure to 50 years of false and malicious accusations.”
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“George Clinton is a musical genius, and it is unfortunate that he has had to endure these erroneous allegations for the past several years,” says Allen. “The Lord said, let there be funk — and no pretenders can shut it down or take it away. To all of the P-Funk family, we remain One Nation Under a Groove.”
A lawyer for the Worrell estate did not return a request for comment.
There’s a lengthy history of legal battles between Worrell and Clinton. The two fought in court over the keyboardist’s share of sound recording royalties when Worrell was still alive in the 1980s, and his estate sued Clinton again in 2019, seeking to enforce their 1976 contract under which Worrell released his ownership stake in the P-Funk master recordings in exchange for royalties.
In 2021, a New York judge held that this contract was null and void because Clinton never signed the deal. This led the Worrell estate to bring the current lawsuit, claiming Worrell was a joint owner of the P-Funk masters because he never officially signed them over in the first place.
Beyond fighting with Worrell and his estate, Clinton has also waged multiple other legal battles over his catalog. Most of these disputes have been with his former agent, Armen Boladian, whose company, Bridgeport Music, owns 90 percent of Clinton’s publishing. Clinton sued Boladian again this past March, claiming Bridgeport used fraud and deception to take over the catalog — claims Boladian strongly denies.
