Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
In case you weren’t aware, yes, the lawsuits from the LOONA members are still ongoing because I guess Blockberry Creative doesn’t have anything else to do. In an unsurprising news update, Haseul, Yeojin, Yves, Go Won, and Olivia Hye had the invalidity of their contracts confirmed by the court.
On the 17th, the Seoul Northern District Court’s 12th Civil Cases Division (Chief Judge Cho Seung-woo) ruled partially in favour of the plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by LOONA Haseul, Yeojin, Yves, Go Won, and Olivia Hye (Hyeju) filed against Blockberry Creative to “confirm the non-validity of their exclusive contract.”
The court dismissed all the plaintiffs’ primary claims but gave the ruling, “it is confirmed that the exclusive contract and supplementary agreements concluded between the plaintiffs and the defendant have no effect.”
Regarding this, LOONA’s legal representative told Yonhap News in a phone call, “We made a primary claim for the nullification of the exclusive contract and a secondary claim for the termination of the exclusive contract, and it appears that the termination was accepted.” This suggests that the secondary claim, prepared in case the primary claim was not accepted, was upheld.
The legal representative also explained that the members had informed Blockberry Creative of their contract termination in 2023, stating that the company had transferred some of the exclusive contract rights to a Japanese entertainment agency without their prior written consent, and that the court seems to have ruled that this notice is legitimate.
Okay, so the partial victory thing can be confusing, but I think it’s explained pretty well. They wanted complete nullification, as if the contract never existed to begin with, but got contract termination instead. It’s also interesting because this was the group that had their injunction denied in 2022 but then given on appeal in 2023 due to basically Blockberry incompetence.
This was a pretty interesting case, just because most simply wanted LOONA out of Blockberry by any means necessary, yet the only way it was able to happen was Blockberry’s incompetence at contract law. I doubt people would’ve changed their minds regardless, but man this seems like could’ve been messy if Blockberry was even incrementally more competent. Thankfully, they weren’t.
