Grammy winner Bruno Mars is asking a judge to free him from his publisher, Bug Music, Inc.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court Tuesday, Mars — whose real name is Peter Hernandez — says that his contract with Bug ended on May 12, 2011 because the publisher didn’t exercise its option to continue it.
Mars’s lawyer, Michael J. Niborski of the law firm Pryor Cashman LLP, wrote that Bug initially acknowledged that Mars fulfilled his part of the contract, and that in order for the deal to remain in effect, Bug would have to officially extend its option to continue.
But after Mars told Bug that he wanted out, Bug “shifted gears, and suddenly argued that (Mars) had not, in fact, met the minimum release requirements,” Niborski wrote.
