Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine Ordered to Pay $25M to Former Beats Business Partner

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine have been ordered to pay more than $25 million to their former business partner Steven Lamar.

In 2016, Lamar filed a $100 million lawsuit against the Beats Electronics co-founders, claiming he was screwed out of royalties for the design of early Beats headphones. Lamar accused Dre and Iovine of breaching the terms of their original contract; however, the defendants argued that Lamar was only involved in the creation of one model, for which he had already been compensated. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury didn’t agree.

According to Billboard, the jury decided Lamar had fulfilled his contract and was owed $25,247,350 in royalties for his work on three Beats models.

“For anybody who has a great idea and brings it to a company and then doesn't get the recognition or credit that they're due ... what this jury verdict says is, if that happens to you and you're a little person, you can go into court and have a jury of American citizens determine whether you're right or wrong. And if you're right, you get the credit that you're owed,” Lamar’s attorney Brian Melton told Billboard. “That's what I felt when I heard the jury verdict. It indicated four years of hard work in this case of standing side-by-side with Mr. Lamar, through the ups and downs, and going against one of the biggest companies in the world with some of the best lawyers in the world.”