Thaindian News

By Gina Gomez
Los Angeles, Feb 15, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Much acclaimed American director Tyler Perry has been hitting headlines lately but not for reasons that would make his fans very proud of him. A lawsuit has been filed against the filmmaker accusing him of including a part of a gospel song in his sitcom “Meet The Browns” without taking the consent of the copyright holder.

It has come to light that the 40 year old “Meet The Browns” creator had a $100,000 lawsuit levied against him by songwriter Johnny Tyrone Stringfield earlier this month in the California District Court. The complaint that has been filed claims that the characters in the popular television series sang an entire stanza from the track ‘I Got Away” in an episode that was supposedly aired last year. The North Carolina based songwriter has reiterated in the complaint that he had copyrighted the song in the year 2008 and thus Tyler Perry as well as the other officials of the show need to pay him a whopping $100,000 in order to settle matters with him. In the much talked about episode, seven characters of the television show sang the verse “The Devil Thought He Had Me, But I Got Away”, which is said to have sparked the controversy. However, comments of the filmmaker or any of his representatives regarding the legal hassle has not been available till now.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time that Tyler Perry has found himself amidst legal troubles owing to copyright issues. In the month of November last year, a lawsuit was filed against the filmmaker for using sections of a gospel song in the 2009 movie “Madea Goes to Jail”.