MANAGING THE SPLIT

A story in this week’s L.A. Daily News about the lawsuit filed by Latium chief Charles Chavez against former management client Pitbull has rekindled an ongoing conversation regarding a key challenge for managers. Pitbull, whose career—according to the suit—took off and flourished under Chavez, decided to bring management in house, in effect managing himself rather than having to pay commissions. The suit demands recording and publishing royalties from albums worked on since 2007 by Chavez (who’s repped by litigator Alan S. Gutman of Gutman Law, with Eric Greenspan of Myman Greenspan serving as entertainment counsel), which it’s alleged Pitbull stopped paying in 2015.

Numerous top managers have experienced similar situations, using their expertise to build an up-and-coming act’s career, hitting it big, and then finding themselves pushed out because the artist no longer wants to pay a percentage of the income that the manager’s efforts—and copious investment of time—helped make possible. There is invariably “sunset” money owed to management when acts decide to move on, and usually litigation (or the threat thereof) is required to obtain it. Typically, such disputes end in a settlement, but it can be an ordeal.

(By the way, speaking of dog breeds, Greenspan has a golden retriever.)