The Coca-Cola Company is a defendant in a federal lawsuit over a commercial. The commercial depicts fans at college football games drinking Coke, with a song playing in the background that sounds a lot like Johnny Cash.
The plaintiff is the John R. Cash Revocable Trust. The complaint alleges that Coke used a singer who imitated Johnny Cash's iconic voice for the ad, without authorization from the Trust (which owns the rights to Cash's name, image, likeness and voice). According to the complaint, "[t]he Trust closely safeguards the legacy of Johnny Cash, including his Voice. Due to the compelling appeal of his legacy, character, and unique contributions to popular culture and music, his Voice deserves to be treated with respect and used for commercial advertising purposes only with the Trust's consent."
All of this begs the question whether a company can be liable for the unauthorized commercial use of a sound alike voice, even if the company doesn't use the singer's name or likeness. The short answer is yes. In 1988, Bette Midler won $400,000 in a "right of publicity" lawsuit against the Ford Motor company after Ford used an unseen Midler impersonator to sing in a car commercial. Two years later, Tom Waits won a similar case against Frito-Lay for similar conduct. Waits, however, won $2.6 million. This begs at least two questions. First, why would a company want to use a Tom Waits sound alike in an ad? Have they heard him sing? I would buy the product on the condition he stop singing. And the second question is why did he get six times as much as the Divine Miss M? I'm not sure, but I am curious.
So, there is precedent supporting Johnny Cash. There's also Tennessee's ELVIS Act. I'm not making that up. In 2024, Tennessee adopted a statute that provides "[a]ny person who knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of an individual's name, photograph, voice, or likeness in any medium, in any manner directed to any person other than such individual, for purposes of advertising products, merchandise, goods, or services, or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandise, goods, or services, without such individual's prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of such minor's parent or legal guardian, or in the case of a deceased individual, the consent of the executor or administrator, heirs, or devisees of such deceased individual, is liable to a civil action."
So, the question is, how does the Cash Trust prove its case? Well, listening to the song, it's easy to conclude that it's intended to sound like Cash. But there's also the fact that the person Coke hired to sing it advertises himself as "The No. 1 Johnny Cash Tribute Show" and "The Man in Black — A Tribute to Johnny Cash." The complaint goes on to state, "[o]n information and belief, the Sound-Alike Singer's only entertainment talent as a singer is to impersonate Johnny Cash." I'm not sure if there is a technical legal term for this, but what a sick burn, as the kids would say.
The Cash Trust also included in its complaint social media posts that demonstrate viewers thought it was Cash, such as this one, that said "thought it was a new track by the Man in Black himself. Is the track available for purchase/download anywhere? No luck searching so far."
Coke has not reached out to me to defend them, but in a case before a jury in Nashville, with allegations of violating a statute named after Elvis, I think I'd advise a prompt settlement and get out of this ring of fire as soon as possible.
