Summer Walker Can Use This Law to Break Her Record Deal. But There’s a $50M Catch.

Summer Walker ’s dispute with Universal Music Group burst into public view last week, when the music giant sued her in Los Angeles court.

But it really started in August, when she first notified the label that she was terminating her 2017 record contract.

Or maybe it started way back in 1872, when California enacted strict time limits on labor contracts in the wake of the Civil War over concerns about involuntary servitude.

Those rules evolved over the next 150 years (with a little help from a landmark ruling for Olivia DeHavilland) into the “seven-year rule,” which bars personal service contracts longer than — you guessed it.

Related Summer Walker in Legal Dispute With Interscope Over Record Deal Hilary Duff to Receive Outstanding Pop Tour of the Year Award at 2026 Billboard Live Music Summit Judge Rules Woman Accused of Shooting at Rihanna & A$AP Rocky's Home Mentally Fit to Stand Trial It was that rule (formally California Labor Code Section 2855) that Walker invoked in August to break her deal with UMG’s Interscope.

Fuerza Regida is also currently citing it in a legal battle with its label Rancho Humilde, and H.E.R. sued her longtime record label for release from her contract under the seven-year rule back in 2022.

In Walker’s case, she signed her recording contract with Interscope in 2017 and — we’ll wait while you do the math — more than seven years have since elapsed.

So she’s free? It’s not that straightforward.

While any other contract would simply be terminated after seven years, record deals are treated uniquely under the law.

Thanks to a 1987 exemption lobbied for by the music industry, labels can sue artists who break their deals on the seven-year rule, demanding lost profits from any contractually required albums they failed to deliver.

That’s what Interscope did last week.

In its lawsuit against Walker, the label alleged she had only released three of her contract’s five-album commitment.

And given that each of those prior albums reached No.

1 or No.