{"id":552636,"date":"2026-01-29T23:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/552636\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T23:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:23:17","slug":"motley-crue-claims-victory-in-legal-war-with-mick-mars-vindicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/552636\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce Claims Victory in Legal War With Mick\u00a0Mars: ‘Vindicated’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tM\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce is declaring a decisive victory in its bitter split with Mick Mars<\/a>, the founding guitarist who claims the legendary metal band unjustly fired him and cut off payments after he bowed out of a world tour due to chronic illness.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a final arbitration award filed in Los Angeles that surfaced Thursday, a retired judge ruled that bandmates Nikki Sixx<\/a>, Tommy Lee<\/a>, and Vince Neil<\/a> were within their rights to remove Mars as an officer and director of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce Inc. after he stepped away from a grueling U.S. stadium tour in 2022 because he suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, disfiguring bone disease.<\/p>\n

\n\tMars, 74, previously told Rolling Stone that he never retired from the band entirely and remained available for a residency or studio work. But the band terminated him, he said, triggering the nasty legal fight<\/a> that ultimately landed in arbitration.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the final ruling, the arbitrator upheld the band\u2019s firing decision and ordered Mars to repay $750,030 from an advance because he missed 69 live shows. The judge also ruled Mars must sell his ownership stake in the iconic group to Sixx, Lee, and Neil for $505,737. After subtracting the sale price, the arbitrator awarded M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce a net payment of $244,293.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis dispute was about protecting the integrity and legacy of one of the most successful bands in rock history,\u201d the band\u2019s lead lawyer, Sasha Frid of Miller Barondess LLP, said in a statement. \u201cWith the arbitrator rejecting every claim and enforcing the parties\u2019 agreements as written, the band has been fully vindicated\u2014legally, financially, and factually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMars\u2019 lawyer, Ed McPherson, blasted the ruling. \u201cThe decision is awful,\u201d the attorney tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair. This band has never been fair to Mick. When Mick said I can\u2019t tour anymore because of a hideous disease, but I can still write, perform one-offs or residencies, and record, they said, \u2018Sorry Mick. It\u2019s been 43 years, but you\u2019re out. Goodbye, and we don\u2019t want to pay you anymore.\u2019 This arbitrator said it\u2019s fine. We need to figure out if we\u2019re going to challenge [the decision]. It\u2019s ridiculous. It\u2019s just a question of whether he wants to keep pursuing this. Basically, he\u2019s over M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tSpeaking with Rolling Stone in 2023, Mars made clear he was still seething. \u201cWhen they wanted to get high and fuck everything up, I covered for them,\u201d he said. \u201cNow they\u2019re trying to take my legacy away, my part of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce, my ownership of the name, the brand. How can you fire Mr. Heinz from Heinz ketchup? He owns it. Frank Sinatra\u2019s or Jimi Hendrix\u2019s legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. They\u2019re trying to take that away from me. I\u2019m not going to let them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn court filings, Mars said he initiated the band\u2019s founding, chose singer Vince Neil \u2013 though \u00a0Neil knew drummer Tommy Lee in high school \u2013 and named M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce. Neil left the band temporarily in 1992, and Lee departed in 1999. Both later returned. While they were gone, they remained shareholders but did not receive income generated by touring.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band denied abandoning Mars when he went public with his legal complaint in 2023. \u201cDespite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything\u2014and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back\u2014the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,\u201d Frid said at the time. \u201cManipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMars also accused his bandmates of miming to pre-recorded tracks on their 2022 reunion tour. \u201cNikki\u2019s bass was 100% recorded,\u201d the guitaris<\/a>t<\/a> told Variety. <\/a>\u201cTommy\u2019s drums, to the best of my knowledge, there was a lot\u2026Everything that we did on that stadium tour was on tape, because if we didn\u2019t, if we missed a part, the tape would keep rolling and you\u2019d miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn an interview with Rolling Stone,<\/a> Sixx emphatically denied this. He also said they had to use pre-recorded songs to cover up alleged issues with Mars\u2019 guitar playing. \u201cWe really were, with kid gloves, always trying to support Mick,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve always stood by his side. But we couldn\u2019t let his side of the stage just be a train wreck. And now he\u2019s only saying these things because he\u2019s trying to hurt us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a press release announcing the arbitration decision, the band\u2019s law firm said Mars \u201cwas forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. His expert confirmed that the band performed live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce is declaring a decisive victory in its bitter split with Mick Mars, the founding guitarist who…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":552637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11368,69714,171,195707,9350,975,195706,55197,67,132,68,242301],"class_list":{"0":"post-552636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-controversy","9":"tag-courts-and-crime","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-mick-mars","12":"tag-motley-crue","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-nikki-sixx","15":"tag-tommy-lee","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-vince-neil"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115980966554690770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}