Brands & Merch Business News Legal

Perry counter-sues former hair product partner

By | Published on Wednesday 24 April 2013

Katy Perry

Katy Perry has hit back at hair-styling company GHD, which filed legal proceedings to formally end its brand partnership with the singer last week, in a new lawsuit in which she contends that the company has reneged on an agreement to renew said partnership in a multi-million dollar deal.

As previously reported, Perry and GHD have fallen out over whether the latter renewed its brand partnership deal with the former, after a two year alliance that began in 2011 reached its conclusion. Perry’s reps say that an extension deal was done, finalised in a phone call last October.

But GHD counters that it never formally concluded the new contract, and that then it decided to cancel the partnership, partly because Perry had refused to endorse the company’s products on social media, and partly because a bit of customer research concluded that the popstar’s reputation in Europe had waned, making the alliance less valuable (or maybe even damaging).

But Perry’s people insist that GHD had agreed to a new two and a half year deal worth $6.5 million. Presumably anticipating legal action to force that payment, the company sued first last week seeking clarification in court that no deal was done. Perry’s countersuit, filed in the Californian courts this week, sets out her arguments as to why a deal was indeed finalised.

Perry’s lawsuit also alleges that GHD continued to use her image once the original partnership had expired, suggesting to her at the time that the partnership renewal – which even the hair product company admits was discussed last year – had been agreed.

If, as GHD claims, by this point it had decided not to renew is Perry partnership, then that was a violation of her publicity rights, the new lawsuit says. It then goes on to allege that GHD may have let this violation occur because at the time its parent company Jemella Group was in the process of being acquired, and management at the top possibly didn’t want any public falling out with Perry while that deal was being closed.

Seemingly deciding that there was no need to be polite in the countersuit, given GHD’s inclusion in its legal papers of the claims that consumer research showed Perry was no longer popular in Europe, the popstar’s litigation concludes: “Those who wish to do business with a company that does not honour its contractual commitments, yet reaps the benefits of the agreements giving rise to those commitments, would find a perfect business partner in GHD”.



READ MORE ABOUT: |