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Appeals Court Rejects Kesha’s Latest Bid to Escape Dr. Luke Contract

kesha counterclaims against Dr. Luke
LAS VEGAS, NV - MAY 19: Kesha performs during the 2018 Billboard Music Awards at Toshiba Plaza on May 19, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for dcp)

On Tuesday (May 29), a New York appeals court affirmed a judge’s 2017 decision to reject Kesha‘s counterclaims against the producer Dr. Luke, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Dr. Luke is currently suing Kesha for “smearing” him through allegations of sexual abuse. This has prompted Kesha to try and have her contractual agreements with the producer terminated in a countersuit against him.

According to THR, Kesha’s countersuit opened with the following statement: “You can get a divorce from an abusive spouse. You can dissolve a partnership if the relationship becomes irreconcilable. The same opportunity — to be liberated from the physical, emotional, and financial bondage of a destructive relationship — should be available to a recording artist.”

Today provided more bad news for the singer’s countersuit. “Kesha’s proposed amendments are palpably insufficient and devoid of merit,” a decision (read here, via THR) by New York’s First Department reads. “Her counterclaim seeking declaratory relief terminating the agreements on the ground of impossibility and impracticability of performance was speculative, contradicted by her own allegations that she had continued performing under the agreements and, as to at least one of the agreements, the impossibility was not produced by an unanticipated event that could not have been foreseen or guarded against.”

Without any further appeals, the defamation claim by Dr. Luke will be the only one considered in the coming trial.