Management Agreement With "Ginuwine" Abandoned

Reives v. Lumpkin, 08-CV-7797, NYLJ 1202716836270, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. decided Jan. 30, 2015).

Plaintiff's suit, claiming that the artist Ginuwine failed to make payments under a 1996 Management Agreement, was dismissed because the parties mutually abandoned the contract less than one year after after entering into the agreement.  The Court found that New York law applied, under which a contract is unenforceable where the parties have abandoned or ignored it.  "In such cases, a later cause of action for breach is typically barred, and will only lie where the agreement of the parties to terminate the contract expressly or impliedly reserved a later cause of action."  Here, the Court found as a matter of fact that Ginuwine had satisfied his burden of proof and sufficiently demonstrated that the parties mutually agreed to abandon the Management Agreement in late summer of 1996.  The Court further found that this abandonment precluded plaintiff's current action for breach as a matter of law.