Longtime Manager Sues Rascal Flatts

NASHVILLE (CN) - Rascal Flatts' former manager wants its 15 percent cut of the take from the band's current tour even though the country act ended its management agreement with Turner Nichols & Associates in February. Turner Nichols says it negotiated the tour and made the band what it is today.

Turner Nichols sued the band and its three members in Davidson County Chancery Court.

The Nashville-based management agency says it's been the band's manager for more than a decade, since the days "when the defendants were struggling and unknown singers, initially financing their careers out of the plaintiff's own funds. The plaintiff has guided the defendants' careers to success as internationally famed singers and recording artists, as multi-platinum record sellers, and as tremendously successful touring artists who have achieved astounding financial success, earning hundreds of millions of dollars."

Turner Nichols says Rascal Flatts paid it 15 percent of gross earnings until the band ended their oral agreement in February 2011.

Turner Nichols says it is entitled to its 15 percent commission until Rascal Flatts' tour ends in June 2013, because it negotiated the tour.

The agency also demands commissions for TV appearances and DVDs that it negotiated.

Turner Nichols seeks declaratory judgment and damages for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. It is represented by Jay Bowen with Bowen & Unger.

Bowen represents another client in an entertainment lawsuit in the same court. In this one, a South Carolina businessman with little experience in the music industry says he was taken for $300,000 by two men who claimed, "untruthfully" that they had been "instrumental in the successful career of several country stars, including Carrie Underwood".

Rick Roach sued Danny Bedford and Ian D'Souza dba KLM Distribution, "apparently a fictitious company."

Rick Roach says he wanted to promote a fellow South Carolinian, Lee Allen Gosnell, who sings under the name Lee Allen.

Allen is not a party to the lawsuit.

After paying $20,000 to help the singer cut an album, Roach says, he was approached by D'Souza, Bedford and a third man, who claimed to be representatives of KLM Distribution, "a new name for Marian Distribution, which they represented, untruthfully, had many employees, was instrumental in the successful career of several country stars, including Carrie Underwood, had sax (6) in-house attorney to deal with music business and legal affairs," and had offices "across the country."

"All of those statements were false and knowingly and intentionally made to induce the plaintiffs to pay monies to the defendants," Roach says.

Roach says he paid the defendants more than $300,000, much of it "for nothing," though Allen did get some airplay on the radio and recorded two more singles.

Roach says the defendants refuse to give him an accounting of what they did with his money.

He seeks punitive damages for fraud, misrepresentation, conversion, unjust enrichment and consumer law violations.

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