Sugarland founder Kristen Hall has filed suit seeking more than $1.5 million from current members of the group, Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush, who now have the nation's No. 1 selling album.
Hall created the name "Sugarland" and founded the band in 2002. After Bush and Nettles came aboard later that year, the trio entered into an agreement in which they were supposed to equally share profits and losses, the suit says.
But after Hall left the band in late 2005 to pursue her own career, she was excluded from her share of the partnership's profits, says the lawsuit.
The suit, filed July 29 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, seeks more than $1.5 million in profits from the partnership, along with interest, attorneys fees and "a formal accounting of all partnership affairs and businesses."
By excluding Hall from the Sugarland partnership and failing to pay her share of the income and profits, Nettles and Bush "have acted in bad faith, have been stubbornly litigious and have caused [Hall] unnecessary trouble and expense," the lawsuit says.
Sugarland's record-label publicist referred calls to the band's Los Angeles lawyer, Gary Gilbert. His office said he was out of town and unavailable for comment Thursday.Sugarland's "Love on the Inside," which debuted last month, is currently No. 1 on the Billboard music charts. Entertainment Weekly recently dubbed the band "the most exciting country act since the Dixie Chicks."
According to the lawsuit, from mid-2002 until Dec. 20, 2005, Hall, Nettles and Bush "jointly endeavored to make the band Sugarland a creative and commercial success, and Hall contributed significant time, effort, energy and passion toward the creative and commercial success of Sugarland."
This includes Hall's work on the band's debut, breakthrough single, "Baby Girl." After the first two version's of the song were received poorly by the band's label, Hall re-recorded the song, which became one of the longest-charting debut singles in the history of country music, the suit says.
Hall wrote or co-wrote every song on the "Twice The Speed Of Life" album, which was released in October 2004 and reached double platinum — two million sold, according to the lawsuit. In 2005, Sugarland was awarded "Breakthrough Favorite New Artist" at the American Music Awards.
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