_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2013 Justin Ward. This case study was originally written by Justin Ward. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License, the terms of which are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/.

Case Study CX005.1

Last revised: February 22, 2015

Selena y los Dinos

Justin Ward

Selena Quintanilla-Perez was born in Texas on April 16, 1971 into an English-speaking Latino family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. (“Quintanilla”) was an enterprising man who had spent his youth trying to make it in the Texas music scene as the manager and a member of a band called Los Dinos. Quintanilla took a job at a chemical plant when he settled down, but later left to open his own restaurant. During his (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to keep the struggling business afloat, he had the musically talented nine-year-old Selena perform live music to help attract customers.

Although the restaurant failed, Selena continued to perform under the name Selena y los Dinos. She learned to sing in Spanish and began recording with local producers. After the eighth grade, she dropped out of school to pursue her musical career. The band remained in many ways a family affair: Quintanilla (once described as “the ultimate stage father”) managed the group, Selena’s brother, A.B., played bass guitar and wrote many of Selena’s songs, and she married the band’s guitarist, Chris Perez.

By 1993, Selena was an award-winning Tejano singer and a rising star, having signed a record deal with Capitol/EMI (which had asked Selena to release albums as “Selena,” not “Selena y los Dinos”). She would go on to further musical success and to open a chain of boutique stores called Selena Etc..

On February 7, 1993, Selena y los Dinos gave a free concert at Corpus Christi Memorial Coliseum. Quintanilla produced the concert, planning the lighting and stage setup. He also arranged for local television station, KIII-TV, to film the show, entering into an oral agreement with Jay Sanchez, a director at KIII-TV. Before the concert, Sanchez sent Quintanilla a note apparently intended to memorialize their agreement:

“Thank you for allowing us to videotape the concert tomorrow night. . . . As per our agreement, we will use the video on the Domingo Show [a local music program] and other news shows. In turn, we will provide you with a master copy on 3/4 [inch recording tape] to use for promotional purposes."

During the concert, a crew of seven KIII-TV employees filmed the show. Four cameras fed video to a production truck, where Sanchez selected which feed to use at any given time. The show was recorded to videotape. Quintanilla had input into the location of the cameras and suggested specific angles and camera zoom during the show. The sound heard on the video was taken from a mixing console operated by audio technicians hired separately by Quintanilla.

Selena y los Dinos CX005.1

 

After the show, Sanchez sent Quintanilla a copy of the videotape along with a second note: “As we agreed, enclosed please find copies of the concert for your use. In exchange, we will use the footage on the Domingo Show.”

Ultimately, audio from the Corpus Christi show (recorded separately from the video recording) became Selena’s grammy-winning album Selena Live. Most of the songs performed in the concert had been written by Selena’s bandmates, most notably her brother, A.B..

On March 31, 1995, Selena was shot and killed by the woman who had managed Selena’s boutiques (and been president of her fan club) before being discharged for embezzlement. Selena’s murder increased her fame and boosted sales of her records. A motion picture about her life, starring Jennifer Lopez in the title role, was released in 1997.

On March 31, 1996 (the first anniversary of Selena’s death), KIII-TV aired a “Selena Special” that featured portions of the videotape of the concert. Quintanilla believed that he and the surviving members of the band should have been consulted prior to the broadcast – and that, in any event, he and the band members were entitled to a share of the revenue earned by KIII-TV from the broadcast.

On February 6, 1997, Quintanilla brought suit against KIII-TV (through its parent company, Texas Television, Inc.) in the Southern District of Texas. The named plaintiffs included Quintanilla and the songwriters, who were Selena’s siblings and bandmates.

Questions:

(1) What claims might the plaintiffs have asserted? (2) What defenses to those claims might KII-TV have raised? (3) Who would prevail? (4) Who should prevail?