FINANCES:DANA INSISTED on being paid royalties when a large number of her discs were sold to a major US charity, the Iowa court was told.
The dispute over the royalty was part of why the two sides fell out in 2005, Dana told the court.
Dana’s sister Susan Stein told the court that Food for the Poor was a charity providing food and housing in South America. She had urged the charity to buy Dana’s recording, The Rosary, to use as a thank-you to donors.
She and Dana met the US charity and later Ms Stein discussed the matter with Damien Scallon and John Brown in Ireland, who said they wanted $5 a CD from the charity.
Eventually a deal for 60,000 CDs at $1.99 each was arrived at.
Because of the size of the discount being given, it was agreed with John Brown that Fr Kevin Scallon, who spoke on the CDs, would not receive any royalties, Ms Stein said.
However, Dana wanted $27,000 as her royalties from the deal, she said. “She wrote me a letter and said if I didn’t pay her $27,000 by nine o’clock that Monday morning, if it was not in her bank account that she was going to notify the Food for the Poor that I was operating in pretence and dah, dah, dah, and . . . the $27,000 was deposited in her checking account by that Monday morning,” Ms Stein told the court.
Dana told the court that she had met a representative for the charity in 2004 with her sister. “I said Susan, I am not in politics any more, we do not have another means of support at this time, I must receive a royalty from this and not to finalise anything.”
She said that when she was told she would not be receiving any royalties she contacted the charity and told it there was a problem with copyright.
There was a period of argument with the Steins, she said, but finally $27,000 was put into her account. She said that after she had told the charity the copyright issue had been resolved, she received a letter from Heart Beat telling her there had been an error and it was taking back $14,000 of the $27,000 and would stop it from her royalties.
Dana said she was not told that the mistake was that the payment should have been split with Fr Scallon. She said she was aware that the priest had a deal with Heart Beat whereby he would receive no payment for discs sold at discount prices to charities.
“I did not have that agreement and I made it very clear that considering our situation, financial situation, I really needed to have a royalty,” she said.