The Kennedy Center has to pay $252,000 in legal fees and costs to jazz musician Chuck Redd after its failed lawsuit against him, a judge ruled Monday.
The Kennedy Center sued Redd for breach of contract after he pulled out of the Kennedy Center’s annual Christmas Eve concert, at which he’d performed every year since 2006.
Redd cited “the defiant and illegal name change happening to the Kennedy Center,” referring to Trump’s failed attempt at renaming the institution the “Trump Kennedy Center,” as reason for his reversal.
“This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” MAGA ally Richard Grenell, then-president of the center, wrote to Redd after he backed out.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier dismissed the suit in June, saying she “could not find a valid breach-of-contract claim here.”
One of Redd’s lawyers, Lisa Banks, said the $252,000 was an “appropriate” amount, “as no citizen should have to spend time and money fending off baseless and politically motivated lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration.”
The Kennedy Center’s lawyers tried to argue that $252,000 was “out of all proportion to the issue at stake,” despite its initial demand for Redd to pay them $1 million. Kennedy Center lawyer Earl “Trey” Mayfield III, who served in the first Trump administration, went so far as to call the amount “abusive” and “nothing short of astonishing” in a court filing submitted last month.
Redd was just one of many artists to spurn the venue after Trump’s coup, in which he appointed himself as chairman of the board and his cronies as board members. The new leadership has made employees fearful of retribution for speaking out against the Trump administration.
“The Trump-controlled Kennedy Center tried to silence opposition to its illegal name change by filing a meritless lawsuit against jazz musician Chuck Redd,” Banks wrote in her statement. “The court rightly dismissed that breach of contract lawsuit, finding there was no contract and no damages, and was brought against Mr. Redd based on his protected opposition.”
