The heated battle between Kesha and her ex-producer Dr. Luke has had its ups and downs, most recently with judges agreeing to hear Kesha’s sexual-abuse case before Dr. Luke’s defamation claim. Earlier this month, the singer amended her original lawsuit to include her record label Sony as a party responsible for the alleged abuse. Now a judge in California has dealt Kesha a minor blow by halting her case. The decision reportedly has to do with the contractual provision of Kesha’s lawsuit, which alleges that Dr. Luke failed to renegotiate her record deal after she raised concerns.
That contract with Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records, a Sony imprint, reportedly stated that any legal disputes over the contract would be handled in New York. Kesha’s lawyers are arguing that the clause pertaining to New York should be waived on the grounds that Kesha, who signed with Dr. Luke at 18, didn’t “freely enter into the contracts and that New York wasn’t the center of the issues involved in the lawsuit.†If Kesha wants to move forward with her case, the California judge says it must happen on the East Coast. On Wednesday, a New York judge blocked Kesha from dismissing herself from Dr. Luke’s defamation case.