Sam Smith and Normani ordered to jury trial over 'Dancing With a Stranger' copyright claim
Sam Smith and Normani will face a jury trial over claims their 2019 single “Dancing With a Stranger” copied an earlier song with the same title.
US District Judge Wesley L. Hsu refused to dismiss the copyright lawsuit on Tuesday, Sept. 22, and ordered the case to go to a jury. The ruling was obtained and first reported by Billboard.
The case centres on two songs named “Dancing With a Stranger”. The lawsuit says the Smith and Normani release copied a 2015 track of the same name by singer Jordan Vincent. It was filed in March 2022 by Vincent and co-writers Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who allege the later song is strikingly similar to theirs in title, chorus and composition.
Smith and Normani deny copying. They say they never heard the earlier song and argue any similarity is coincidental. In copyright law, that argument is known as independent creation, which means two writers can produce similar material separately without infringement.
Judge Hsu said that defence cannot be decided on paper. “The question of independent creation should be left for the jury to decide,” he wrote.
The ruling went in favour of a trial after a request known as a motion for summary judgment, a bid to have a judge resolve a case without hearing full evidence from witnesses. The judge had earlier signalled he was leaning toward denying that bid.
This is not the first turn in the case. Judge Hsu initially dismissed the lawsuit, ruling the two songs were not similar enough to support an infringement claim. A federal appeals court later revived it and sent it back to the lower court.
The dispute has an unusual wrinkle. The plaintiffs have conceded there is no direct evidence that anyone involved in creating the Smith and Normani song ever heard Vincent’s track. Their case instead rests on the argument that the songs are so alike that copying must have occurred.
“Dancing With a Stranger” was released in 2019. It peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 45 weeks on that chart, according to Billboard.
For listeners, this means the fight now moves from legal filings to a courtroom. A jury will weigh whether the similarities amount to copying, or whether the later song was created independently.
