Sara Landry's company, Landry IP LLC, sued her former managers Night Night Ltd (trading as The Night Department) and Prepare to Flash Ltd in Manhattan federal court on October 6, 2026, alleging they kept using her name and Hekate Records branding after she fired them. The firm's own breach claim against her is already running in London.
The New York case, 1:26-cv-08813 in the Southern District of New York, is a trademark suit. The UK case, which Billboard reports The Night Department filed in July, asks whether Landry was entitled to end her management contract at all. Two courts, one breakup, one question for every artist running a label with a manager: whose name is on the paperwork?
What does Landry's New York lawsuit claim?
Landry signed with The Night Department in 2023, with Matthew Verovkins as senior manager and Harry Glaisher on day-to-day, and terminated the firm in August 2025, Billboard reports. The complaint says that afterward the companies used her marks to create “the false impression to music-industry participants and other consumers that they were authorized to act on behalf of Hekate Records and Landry.” The alleged use was in music distribution and in promoting the management business, after a relationship the complaint says ended by late October 2025, per EDM House Network.
The sharpest allegation is practical. When Landry's representatives sought control of Hekate's account with the distributor Believe, Prepare to Flash allegedly refused to authorize the transfer, Law Commentary reports. The suit, filed by Nicholas Saady of Pryor Cashman, claims violations of federal and state trademark law and seeks the defendants' “profits attributable to their unauthorized use of the marks,” with no dollar figure named. As of CourtListener's most recent copy of the docket, dated October 14, the defendants had filed no response, and the complaint itself was not free to read on the public docket.
Ownership and artists' rights are deeply important to me, and I look forward to continuing to advocate for artists to have control over their work and their careers.Sara Landry, statement to Billboard
What does The Night Department say?
Its side, from its UK filings as reported by Billboard: it was transparent about ownership, the terms were laid out in the contracts, and it was Landry who breached the deal by walking away. In those UK filings, Landry accused the firm of having “attempted to strip [Landry] of her rights to her own music as well as her ownership and control of Hekate Records,” and she has since counterclaimed. CMU, summarizing the filings, says the managers initially helped run Hekate under a 50/50 arrangement with no written contract, and the fight is over whether that meant half the revenue or half the copyrights too. Landry's complaint says the managers sought to “seize 50% ownership of Landry's music and 50% ownership of Hekate Records.” Neither court has ruled on it. CMU also called the trademark strand not “a particularly strong case.”
Who filed the Hekate Records trademark?
The USPTO file for HEKATE RECORDS (serial 90011746) shows it was filed on June 19, 2020 with Sara Landry as the individual applicant and registered on March 22, 2022, number 6680319, for audio and video recordings. Its assignment record shows Landry transferred it to Landry IP LLC on November 12, 2025, after the split. A companion application for plain HEKATE on clothing, filed the same day, was abandoned in October 2021.
The label's name was filed in her own name three years before the 2023 management contract, though CMU reports the firm was already involved with Hekate from around 2020. What the suit says she could not easily take back was the distributor account.
A trademark certificate and a distributor account are two different keys. Landry's suit says she held one and not the other.
What should an independent artist check?
Manager-run labels are common, and so are fights over them, as Summer Walker's suit against LVRN showed. Before the relationship sours, check four things:
- Search your artist name and label name in the USPTO's free TSDR system and read the owner field. If it names a manager or a management company, ask why.
- Read the assignment tab: it should show nothing you did not sign.
- Find out whose company holds the distribution account for your label, and whose email can approve a transfer. The account controls releases and royalties; UMG's fight with DistroKid showed independents this fall how much rides on it.
- Put any label split in writing, and say whether it covers revenue, copyrights or both. Who owns the masters is cheapest to settle on day one.
Landry's second album, Divine Intervention, was set for release on October 16, with both cases at an early stage. The New York court will decide the marks; London decides the contract.