The full amount of Mariah Carey’s copyright payout has been revealed.
Newly released court documents show the pop diva received almost $100,000 after a singer claimed she’d copied his work.
In 2023, country crooner Andy Stone claimed Mariah’s 1994 megahit All I Want for Christmas had ripped off his 1989 song of the same name.
“If you look at both songs, you can see that about 50 per cent of the words are the same, in almost the same order. I think it’s a pretty strong claim,” the plaintiff’s lawyer, Douglas M Schmidt, told Rolling Stone magazine at the time.
However, in March, judge Monica Ramirez Almadini declared the claims baseless, adding the tracks’ only similarities were a series of “Christmas song cliches” such as the mention of mistletoe and Santa.
Having asked for $20 million (£16 million), Stone, also known by the stage name “Vince Vance”, was instead instructed to pay Carey, 56, $92,000 (£68,000) in sanctions after his lawsuit was thrown out.
The substantial penalty was imposed after Almadini described Stone’s case as “egregious” and explained it was particularly large thanks to the plaintiff’s quantity of petty claims.
“Although each incident of sanctionable conduct, in isolation, may not warrant more than a stern reprimand,” the dismissal document read, “it is the aggregate of misconduct reflected in Plaintiffs’ Motion that makes this an egregious situation warranting more severe sanctions.”
