Cher Comes Back for an Encore, Appealing $1M Decision

Photo Credit: Sonny and Cher for CBS Television, December 28, 1973 / Public Domain

Cher’s request for Sonny Bono’s widow to reimburse her $1 million in legal fees after their court battle was denied. Now, she’s appealing the decision.

If you thought you’d heard the last of Cher and Mary Bono’s legal battle over the singer’s Sonny and Cher royalties, think again. Cher was victorious against Bono’s widow—who attempted to stop Cher’s 50% share of royalty payments stemming from her divorce settlement with Sonny back in 1978. Now, she’s appealing the court’s decision to deny her request for Mary Bono to reimburse her legal fees.

Mary Bono had argued that copyright termination rights allowed her to void Cher’s divorce settlement with Sonny, which entitled the singer to a 50% cut of the publishing revenue from songs written during their time together. That includes timeless hits like “The Beat Goes On” and “I Got You Babe.”

Sonny and Cher divorced in 1978, and Sonny later married Mary. However, he passed away in a skiing accident in 1998.

In 2021, Mary argued that she should no longer be forced to pay Cher under the divorce settlement due to copyright termination rights, claiming that the settlement should be the same as a songwriter selling their rights to a publisher. Therefore, she argued that she should be able to void it by invoking termination rights.

But in 2024, the judge overseeing the case ruled that termination rights did not apply, since Sonny and Cher’s settlement was a contract for financial compensation—not a copyright assignment.

After the judge ruled in her favor, Cher immediately filed a motion for Mary to reimburse her legal fees, which she said had amounted to $1 million after Bono’s widow “dragged” the case out unnecessarily over the last several years.

“Defendant argued, repeatedly and frivolously, that a federal statute that expressly states it does not affect state-law rights somehow extinguishes those state-law rights,” Cher’s lawyers wrote.

The judge denied her request last month. But Cher wasted no time in appealing that decision, asserting that the case was unnecessary and would have been over much quicker and far cheaper were it not for Mary Bono. Whether an appeals court will see things differently than the presiding judge remains to be seen.