By Secrets Reporters
The summonses went out by mail and the defence side of the case stayed empty. Emmerson Amidu Bockarie was served on 11 June 2025, the papers accepted by mail, with his answer due on 2 July 2025. Carlos Jenkins and Marques Miles II were served on 19 July 2025, their answers due on 11 August 2025. Both dates passed in silence. No answer was filed for any of the three men, no defence lawyer entered an appearance for any of them, and the record they left behind ran to its end on 23 January 2026, when Judge Vernon S. Broderick of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment against all three of them, together with a permanent injunction. The whole movement of the case after its famous defendant settled and left it, the second settlement, the defaults, the failure to prosecute orders and the judgment itself, has been reported by no news outlet anywhere, and it is revealed here by SecretsReporters from the court documents.
The judgment, document 59 on the court file in Martins Chukwuka Emmanuel et al. v. Wynn Records et al., case number 1:25-cv-02833-VSB, was entered on the same day Judge Broderick held an Order to Show Cause hearing in the case, 23 January 2026, on the plaintiffs’ motion for default judgment against Bockarie, Jenkins and Miles. It grants default judgment as to liability in favour of the plaintiffs against the three men on Count I of the complaint, copyright infringement, and it records that the three men’s past and present reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public performance of the infringing work violates the plaintiffs’ rights under the Copyright Act of the United States. David Adedeji Adeleke, known as Davido, is not a judgment debtor under the order. He settled and was dismissed out of the case in May 2025, and the judgment does not touch him.
The injunction that stands on the judgment runs against each of the three men and against his officers, directors, employees, agents, subsidiaries, distributors, designees, publishers, labels, administrators, assigns and licensees, and against all persons in active concert or participation with any of them who have notice of the order. They are permanently restrained and enjoined from reproducing, adapting, distributing or publicly performing the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works without the plaintiffs’ express authorisation, and from causing, aiding, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting, inducing or materially contributing to any such reproduction, adaptation, distribution or public performance.
For all the force of the liability finding and the injunction, the judgment carries no money. The complaint in the case claimed $150,000, the transfer of royalty interests in the disputed song and an injunction. The judgment of 23 January 2026 awards no damages at all, orders no royalty transfer and makes no order for costs. The three men stand adjudged liable for copyright infringement and permanently injuncted, and the sum the court ordered them to pay is nothing.
The case began on 4 April 2025, when Martins Chukwuka Emmanuel, Abel Great Umaru, Kelvin Ayodeji Campbell and David Ovhioghena Umaru filed the complaint in New York against Wynn Records, Davido, Bockarie, who performs as Emmerson, Jenkins, Matthew Quinney, Miles and TuneCore, Inc. The plaintiffs stated that their 2022 song “Work”, registered with the United States Copyright Office under number SRu 1-599-163 for both the sound recording and the underlying composition, was shared with Davido in January 2022 for a possible collaboration, that Davido passed it to Bockarie, and that Bockarie sampled its vocal and instrumental parts into the 2024 release “Strawberry on Ice” without credit or payment. The complaint further stated that Davido then breached a written settlement agreement of 14 March 2025 under which he was to pay $45,000 by 24 March 2025 and transfer 40 percent of the composition royalties and 20 percent of the sound recording royalties in “Strawberry on Ice”, and the suit was brought under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. section 501, with a jury demanded by the plaintiffs.
Davido’s own exit came first and it was the only later movement of the case that any outlet reported at the time. He never answered the complaint. On 15 May 2025 the plaintiffs filed a notice of voluntary dismissal as to Adeleke only, expressly pursuant to a settlement reached between the parties, and Judge Broderick so-ordered the dismissal on 16 May 2025, each side bearing its own fees and costs, and Adeleke was terminated as a defendant. Peoples Gazette reported that settlement and dismissal on 17 May 2025. No filing by Davido or on his behalf appears anywhere on the record of the case after it, and the judgment entered eight months later is against Bockarie, Jenkins and Miles alone.
The second settlement emptied the case further and passed without a single report. TuneCore, the music distribution company sued alongside the individual defendants, had waived service in June 2025 and taken extensions of its time to answer through the summer. On 10 September 2025 Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang, to whom the case had been referred for general pretrial management, recorded in a text order that the court congratulated the parties on their settlement in principle, and TuneCore’s answer deadline was extended without a date. The plaintiffs filed their notice of voluntary dismissal as to TuneCore on 26 September 2025, Judge Broderick so-ordered it on 29 September 2025, and TuneCore was terminated from the case, each side again bearing its own fees.
What remained after the two settlements was a case the plaintiffs themselves nearly lost by neglect. The Clerk of Court entered a certificate of default against Bockarie on 30 July 2025. On 29 September 2025 Magistrate Judge Wang issued an Order to Show Cause directing the plaintiffs to show cause by 6 October 2025 why the action should not be recommended for dismissal as to the remaining defendants for failure to prosecute, and the initial case management conference fixed for 7 October 2025 was cancelled. The plaintiffs answered the order, in a filing recorded as document 45 on the court file, representing to the court that they intended to move for default judgment once the Clerk’s certificate of default was entered for the remaining defendants, and the remaining certificates of default were entered on 8 October 2025. The motion still did not come. On 14 November 2025 Judge Wang ordered the plaintiffs to file their motion for default judgment by 26 November 2025, warning that she might otherwise enter a recommendation that the case be dismissed as to the remaining defendants for failure to prosecute. The motion followed, the Order to Show Cause hearing was held before Judge Broderick on 23 January 2026, and the default judgment was entered the same day.
Two of the original defendants stand outside every one of these orders. Wynn Records, the label named first in the caption of the case, and Matthew Quinney are shown on no public mirror of the court file as ever having been served, no default was entered against either of them, and neither of them is named in the default judgment.
Every plaintiffs’ filing on the record was made by one lawyer, Leo M. Lichtman of ESCA Legal LLC of Sixth Avenue, New York, and no press release, statement or publication by the plaintiffs or their counsel about the settlements, the defaults or the judgment has been issued at any point. No recorded assignment of the royalty interests promised under the March 2025 settlement, the 40 percent of the composition and the 20 percent of the recording, was found in the Copyright Office records reachable in public searches, a position the documents leave unrecorded rather than disproved. The docket’s last word is the judgment itself, liability and a permanent injunction against three men who never filed a word in their own defence, and not one dollar in damages on a claim that opened at $150,000.
