Led Zeppelin Trial: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Are ‘Acting as if This Is a Concert,’ Lawyer Says
Lawyer wants to know if and when “Stairway to Heaven” musicians will be showing up to court
The attorney for a man suing Led Zeppelin over the band’s signature song “Stairway to Heaven” has a message for guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant: This is a trial, not a concert.
In a strongly worded filing in federal court in California on Monday, attorney Francis Malofiy says Led Zeppelin’s attorneys need to quit stalling and declare when the musicians will appear in court to testify in the trial, if they are showing up at all.
“Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, with the aid of defense counsel, want to dictate the court’s schedule,” the filing reads. “The lack of common courtesy from defense counsel is, frankly, astonishing. Defendants are acting as if this is a concert where their celebrity status allows them to decide when they will appear.”
Malofiy represents Michael Skidmore, trustee for Spirit frontman Randy Craig Wolfe — a.k.a. Randy California, who died in 1997 — for copyright infringement. Skidmore contends that “Stairway” infringes on the Spirit song “Taurus.”
Page has claimed that, though the Spirit album that contains “Taurus” was in his collection, he never heard the song before the lawsuit was filed.
The attorney says that not knowing whether Plant, Page and former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones will be present when the trial begins June 14 is “causing major headaches and prejudicing Plaintiff’s case.”
“[T}here is no way Plaintiff can accurately account for and schedule his witnesses and deposition designations — and present his case-in-chief effectively — if he does not know whether the three main Defendants and witnesses will be present,” Monday’s filing reads.
Malofiy goes on to assert that Plant and Jones “regularly conduct business in person in Los Angeles and California,” citing tour dates, and that, given “that they are multimillionaires, many times over, and are already attending trial, compelling attendance presents no actual financial difficulty.”
