Judge Allows Missy Elliott Co-Writing Lawsuit to Proceed Despite ‘Heartbroken’ Track Victory

A Missy Elliott co-writing lawsuit will head to trial despite a recent victory that claims she refused to appropriately credit Terry Williams as a co-writer on the late Aaliyah’s 1996 “Heartbroken” track.

On Aug. 27, Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro rejected Elliot’s motion to dismiss the Missy Elliott co-writing lawsuit. Per the “Minute Man” emcee’s attorneys, for four of the five songs Williams alleges to have co-written alongside Elliott, the pair did not meet until after the songs were produced. Billboard reported that the tracks belong to Sista, the R&B group that was Elliott’s claim to fame in the 1990s.

“Considering these conflicting arguments and evidence, a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether Williams and Elliott were working together at the time of the production of the SISTA album … and whether Williams’ contributions to the Unpublished Songs were used on derivative songs released on the album,” wrote Judge Alejandro in an official statement.

Although the judge rejected Elliot’s motion for summary judgment, which the Cornell Law School defines as “a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party without a full trial,” Williams did not win the lawsuit. Instead, the pair will head to court, where he must prove his claims before a jury.

Moreover, Elliott did achieve a small victory when the judge dismissed Williams’ claim that he co-wrote “Heartbroken,” the 1996 track released by late R&B songstress Aaliyah. According to the ruling, Williams’ decision to wait until 2018 to sue about a track that he would’ve known he had not been appropriately attributed for decades is no longer possible, according to the statute of limitations.

“Considering the success of Aaliyah’s One in a Million album, on which ‘Heartbroken’ was released, and Williams’ work in the music industry after the album’s release, including with Elliott, a reasonable person in Williams’ position would have been on notice of the use of his unpublished song in the purportedly derivative song Heartbroken by Aaliyah,” Judge Alejandro wrote.

Before becoming the innovative multi-hyphenate that the world knows today, thanks to her contributions to music as a producer, songwriter, emcee, singer, and overall visionary, Elliott emerged on the scene as a singer and member of Sista, a group comprised of four members. Formed in the late ‘80s as Fayze, the Virginia native served as a singer and songwriter for the group alongside LaShawn Shellman, Chonita Coleman, and Radiah Scott.

At this time, neither Williams nor Elliott have made statements regarding the news that they will soon go to trial over the co-writing allegations.

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