Sam Smith and Normani copyright case over 'Dancing With a Stranger' to go to trial
Sam Smith and Normani have failed to end a copyright dispute over “Dancing With a Stranger” before trial.
U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu refused their motion for summary judgment, a request to decide the case without a jury, in a 27-page order. The ruling was reported on 23 September 2026, and it means the case will now go to trial, Rolling Stone reported.
The claim centres on two songs with the same title. Songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlao, organised as Sound and Color, allege that Smith and Normani’s 2019 single stole its hook from their 2015 song of the same name.
The case, captioned Sound & Color v. Sam Smith, was first filed in March 2022. It was dismissed in 2023, then revived on appeal. Judge Hsu had already outlined a tentative position in line with the final ruling during oral arguments at a hearing on 11 September.
In the order, Hsu said the plaintiffs had introduced a triable issue of material fact on striking similarity and independent creation. Striking similarity is the argument that two works are so alike that copying is the only likely explanation. That dispute, the judge said, blocked a pretrial finding of no infringement.
The judge also rejected the defendants’ method for picking the songs apart. He ruled that analysing musical elements such as pitch, rhythm, metric placement and contour in isolation is improper under Ninth Circuit law. The order favours a full jury hearing over a pretrial decision, with the music assessed as a whole rather than note by note.
Two other defences also failed to end the case. Hsu found a dispute of material fact over the defendants’ claim that the 2015 song incorporated unauthorised samples from two other copyrighted works. He ruled separately that the question of independent creation, the argument that Smith and Normani created their song on their own, must be weighed against the plaintiffs’ initial evidence of copying and left for the jury.
Universal Music Group is among the other defendants alongside Smith and Normani.
For listeners following the dispute, this means the argument moves from legal papers to a courtroom. A jury will now decide whether copying occurred, unless the parties reach a settlement first.
