Dionne Warwick has filed counterclaims against Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation (AREC), the royalty collection firm that sued her in December over unpaid commissions.
As MBW reported, AREC filed its complaint on December 15 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
The firm claimed it had spent decades helping Warwick recover royalties — including negotiating Doja Cat’s sampling of Walk On By in Paint the Town Red — under agreements entitling it to 50% of recovered sums.
AREC alleged Warwick was “trying to evade paying Artists Rights hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars” by unilaterally terminating those agreements and asking record labels to pay her directly.
The firm claimed its work had resulted in more than $2.5 million in revenue for Warwick, including an average of over $350,000 annually over the past five years, and that her royalty distribution had increased “approximately sixtyfold” as a result of its efforts.
In a 43-page filing submitted on Monday (March 9) in the same court, and obtained by MBW, Warwick’s legal team at Meloni & McCaffrey LLC denied AREC’s allegations, raised affirmative defenses, and launched eight counterclaims of their own. She is seeking punitive damages of at least $1 million on multiple counts, plus a full equitable accounting of all monies AREC collected on her behalf over the past 23 years. Warwick has demanded a jury trial.
The filing opens with a reference to Aesop’s fable The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing and accuses AREC of “cloaking itself in professional credibility while concealing its own self-interest.”
Warwick’s attorneys wrote: “Through these counterclaims, Ms. Warwick seeks to expose AREC’s performative ethics and vindicate her rights and obtain restitution for the damages caused by AREC’s decades-long pilfering of millions of dollars in royalty income.”
Among the most striking allegations, Warwick accuses AREC of torpedoing a potential deal she was negotiating with Primary Wave in the fall of 2025 to sell the revenue streams from her sound recordings. According to the filing, AREC’s representatives contacted Primary Wave directly and claimed the firm “owned” 50% of the catalog’s royalty streams — effectively blocking the transaction.
AREC’s representatives also allegedly told Primary Wave that the firm was open to receiving its own offers for its purported share, “for AREC’s sole benefit and to the exclusion of Ms. Warwick.”
Her filing accuses AREC of taking a 50% commission on virtually all of her royalty income for over two decades — far exceeding the scope of a one-page agreement signed in 2001, which Warwick contends was limited to recovering unpaid royalties from her Scepter Records catalog.
“Rather than addressing the reasonable demands made by Ms. Warwick’s counsel or offering any justification for its numerous defalcations, AREC instead chose to initiate this litigation against Ms. Warwick.”
DIONNE WARWICK’S FILING
The counterclaims describe a pattern in which AREC is claimed to have directed all of Warwick’s royalty statements and payments — from Warner, Sony, Rhino, PPL, and SoundExchange — to be sent to AREC’s own accounts. According to the filing, AREC never provided Warwick with accounting statements or copies of those royalty reports during the entire period.
The filing states that AREC’s original complaint “grossly exaggerates the work it performed” and “is full of self-aggrandizing statements designed to inflate its purported contributions and justify the unmerited windfall of millions of dollars.”
When Warwick’s new attorneys at the Davis Firm requested a complete set of AREC’s files relating to Warwick last September, AREC’s litigation counsel responded: “Under what basis does Ms. Warwick have a right to an accounting?” Warwick’s filing called that response a revelation of AREC’s “fundamentally untenable position” regarding its fiduciary obligations.
The filing added: “Rather than addressing the reasonable demands made by Ms. Warwick’s counsel or offering any justification for its numerous defalcations, AREC instead chose to initiate this litigation against Ms. Warwick.”
Warwick’s filing also argues that because AREC’s work was carried out by licensed attorneys, she had the right to terminate the relationship at any time — and that AREC is entitled to no more than the fair value of services it actually performed, rather than a perpetual 50% cut. Warwick’s attorneys also point to a 2021 appellate ruling in which a court found that a nearly identical AREC agreement with a different artist client could be terminated.
Warwick, aged 85, is known for hits including Walk On By, I Say a Little Prayer, That’s What Friends Are For, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, and many more. She has won six Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame.
She won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday, AREC defended its work for Warwick, saying she had been receiving only “a small fraction” of her rightful compensation before hiring the company. “We look forward to proving that Artists Rights is entitled to its fee for the extensive work it has done for Ms. Warwick,” the firm said.Music Business Worldwide
