Cher says Sonny Bono’s widow should have to foot the $1 million bill from elite lawyers who won a court ruling preserving the pop superstar’s right to publishing royalties.
Mary Bono initiated a bitter legal battle in 2021 by claiming Cher was no longer entitled to royalties from the Sonny & Cher catalog, including 1960s hits like “I Got You Babe,” “The Beat Goes On” and “Baby Don’t Go.” But a California federal judge rejected this contention in 2024, and he officially entered judgment in Cher’s favor this past November.
Now, Cher wants Mary to cover the hefty fees incurred by her attorneys at the media law powerhouse Davis Wright Tremaine. The legal team, composed of Peter Anderson, Sean Sullivan, Eric Lamm and Samuel Turner, billed nearly 2,000 hours at rates ranging from $400 to $795 per hour.
“Defendant sought to keep or obtain, among other things, millions of dollars of Cher’s royalties,” reads the Monday (Jan. 12) motion for reimbursement. “Given the relief that Cher sought and the amounts of royalties involved, Cher was perfectly justified in incurring $1,023,605.50 in attorney’s fees to successfully defeat defendant’s improper attempt at termination.”
The litigation revolved around Cher and Sonny’s 1978 divorce settlement, which allocated Cher a 50% cut of the publishing royalties from songs the former couple wrote together. That agreement stayed in effect for years, including after Bono died in a 1998 skiing accident — until Mary took the position in 2021 that Cher was no longer due any royalties because of copyright law’s so-called termination right.
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The termination right allows songwriters and their heirs to claw back control of intellectual property decades after signing it away. But U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt ruled in 2024 that this provision cannot apply to Sonny and Cher’s divorce, which was a contract for financial compensation rather than a copyright assignment.
Cher’s lawyers argue in the Monday fee motion that Mary’s position was always rooted in an “untenable interpretation” of copyright law. They note, for example, that the termination right statute specifically excludes contracts arising out of state law, such as Sonny and Cher’s California-based divorce settlement.
“Yet defendant dragged this case out for five years by taking patently unreasonable positions,” write Cher’s attorneys. “Defendant argued, repeatedly and frivolously, that a federal statute that expressly states it does not affect state-law rights somehow extinguishes those state-law rights.”
Mary’s legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on the fee request on Tuesday (Jan. 13). She is appealing Judge Kronstadt’s decision and has maintained that the termination right was properly invoked.
