Mötley Crüe has won a key ruling in its bitter breakup with guitarist Mick Mars, saying that the band was legally allowed to fire him – and that Mars actually owes his ex-mates hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The civil war inside the iconic heavy metal band burst into the open in 2023, when Mars filed a lawsuit accusing co-founders Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil of unfairly terminating him and failing to pay him after he could no longer tour due to a chronic illness.
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But in a ruling made public on Tuesday and obtained by Billboard, an arbitrator says the band did nothing wrong. He says Crüe was legally entitled to remove Mars after his guitar playing had severely “deteriorated” — and that the band had long ago agreed that only touring members would be paid.
“I find that the contracts, the law, and the equities lead to the conclusion that band members who stop touring are not entitled to share in the proceeds from touring,” writes Patrick J. Walsh, a retired federal judge. “Mars voluntarily stopped touring and, as a result, he is not entitled to share in the tour proceeds.”
On the contrary, Walsh says it’s actually Mars who owes the band money. In 2019, the guitarist received $1.5 million as his portion of a $7 million advance Crüe received from Live Nation for an upcoming tour – a sum that was to be recouped by the band’s performances. Since Mars skipped 69 shows, Walsh says he must pay back much of that advance.
“It was not a payment for services. It was not a gift. It was not an honorarium. It was an advance,” Walsh writes. “And Mars knew it and knew that he had to pay it back.”
Under that ruling, Mars owes the band more than $750,000 in unrecouped advance money. But since Crüe must also pay him $505,737 for his 25 percent stake in the band after removing him, Walsh says the final bill is for Mars to pay the band $244,293.
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In a statement, Mötley Crüe’s attorney Sasha Frid said: “This dispute was about protecting the integrity and legacy of one of the most successful bands in rock history. With the arbitrator rejecting every claim and enforcing the parties’ agreements as written, the band has been fully vindicated—legally, financially, and factually.”
An attorney for Mars did not immediately return a request for comment.
Formed in 1981, Mötley Crüe was one of the top rock bands of the 1980s, reaching the top of the Billboard 200 with 1989’s Dr. Feelgood. But in April 2023, Mars claimed that his former “brothers” had tossed him to the curb after he said he could no longer tour due to a “tragic” disability called ankylosing spondylitis.
The band strongly denied the allegations, saying they had offered Mars “generous compensation” and had tried to “keep these matters private to honor Mick’s legacy,” but that he had chosen to file an “ugly public lawsuit.” They claimed Mars made serious errors on stage before he exited the band, including suddenly “playing a different song in the middle of another one.”
For years, the dispute moved ahead in private arbitration, where Walsh considered the disputed requirements of the band’s operating agreement and sorted out who owed what to whom. Over the past year, the arbitrator has issued a series of sealed rulings siding with Crüe. On Tuesday, those decisions were made public when Crüe’s attorneys asked a Los Angeles court to confirm them.
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In seeking to keep getting paid after stepping away from touring, Mars argued that other iconic musical acts like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Beach Boys had kept paying their founding members even after they were unable to keep performing. In his ruling, Walsh says that very well may be true, but that it had no bearing on the battle over Crue.
“Mars argues that it is immoral for him to be cast aside after forming the backbone of this group for more than four decades merely because his age and AS symptoms precluded him from performing,” the retired judge writes in his decision. “I am not unsympathetic to this argument but it is not for me in the context of this arbitration to weigh in on the morality of the band’s decision.”
The judge pointedly notes that it was Mars himself who was the “architect” of the contract provision requiring payment of tour revenue only to band members who actually performed in concert. And Walsh says that provision makes perfect sense because touring can be “rigorous, monotonous, and onerous.”
“It requires them to be separated from their family and friends for long stretches of time and sleep in a bed not their own night after night. In fact, these are some of the very reasons why Mars elected to stop touring,” the judge writes. “It seems inequitable that three members of a band would be subjected to the hardships of the road yet all four would share in the spoils.”
As for Mars’ removal from the band, the judge says the band’s operating agreement gives the other three members broad powers to decide when a member should be removed “for cause” — and that they had cited valid reasons for doing so.
“The testimony established that they terminated Mars because they believed that his guitar playing had so deteriorated that they had to make provisions to cover for his mistakes when he strayed duringconcerts,” Walsh writes. “The decision by Sixx, Lee, and Neil to terminate him as an officer and director for legal cause is entitled to deference.”
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