Mr
Allen Klein, a former manager of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, lied when
giving evidence in the High Court in support of a senior music company executive
who was paying him £1,500 a week for “unspecified services,” a judge said.In a reserved judgement on a dispute over the assets of Westminster Music, which controls the rights to many songs of the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Procol Harum and other well-known artists, Mr Justice Walton said that Mr David Platz, managing director of Westminster, had committed the “grossest possible” breaches of contract.
The case, which lasted 77 days, involved a dispute between Mr Platz and Mr Howard Richmond, an American music publisher. The Judge ordered Mr Platz to pay damages and granted an injunction restraining him in his conduct as managing director.
The judge said that Mr Platz and Mr Klein were “thick as thieves”. Mr Klein sued Westminster over Rolling Stones’ copyrights, yet Mr Platz was paying him a $500,000 fee (416,500), and £1,500 a week during the trial. Their collaboration was aimed at “softening up” Mr Richmond.
Mr Justice Walton said that Mr Klein had changed parts of his evidence quite dramatically on the second day, claiming a “mental block” on the first. “I do not accept that there was any mental block at all. His original answers were just untrue,” the judge said.
Mr Klein was a partisan witness, the judge added. He had been misled by the duty he felt to Mr Platz, “whether arising out of this payment or otherwise,” to attack Mr Richmond.