Fuerza Regida‘s central claim that California’s “seven-year rule” has freed the band from their recording deal with Rancho Humilde will proceed, after a federal judge refused to dismiss it.
But in the same ruling, US District Judge Hernán D. Vera declined to decide the question at the center of the case: whether the statute frees the band from their contract.
The claim rests on California Labor Code Section 2855, which provides that a personal-services contract “may not be enforced against the employee beyond seven years from the commencement of service under it.”
In an order filed on Thursday (July 9), which you can read in full here, Judge Vera granted in part and denied in part Rancho and Humble Talent Agency‘s motion to dismiss seven of the band’s counterclaims.
The Section 2855 declaratory-relief counterclaim survived, while the band’s related claim for damages under the statute was dismissed, along with counterclaims for unfair competition and unjust enrichment.
Fuerza Regida is the regional Mexican band fronted by Jesús Ortiz Paz, alongside fellow founding members Samuel Jaimez, Khrystian Ramos and Jose Garcia; tololoche player Moisés López joined as a fifth member in 2022.
Rancho sued the group in September 2025 over what it called unauthorized performances.
Fuerza Regida countersued, alleging the label withheld royalties, denied the return of master recordings and moved to “sabotage” its opportunities.
At the heart of the case is whether the seven-year clock resets each time an artist signs a new contract, a question the court described as unsettled under California law.
“Although the court has the contracts and the timeline of when they were entered into, the court does not now have all of the facts regarding the circumstances of their negotiation in order to determine whether there was an intent to avoid the application of section 2855.”
Hernán D. Vera, US District Judge
“Although the court has the contracts and the timeline of when they were entered into, the court does not now have all of the facts regarding the circumstances of their negotiation in order to determine whether there was an intent to avoid the application of section 2855,” Judge Vera wrote in the order.
The two have been tied together since February 2, 2018, when Rancho and Lumbre Music signed an exclusive recording agreement with the four musicians for an initial three-year term.
They signed a new recording agreement effective December 30, 2021, which carried a USD $300,000 signing bonus and a clause superseding the earlier deal.
Days later, on January 1, 2022, they entered a settlement agreement that terminated the 2018 contract and provided a $1.8 million settlement sum.
In August 2022, alongside a global distribution agreement with Sony Music Entertainment US Latin, they amended the 2021 deal to extend its term to at least 2027.
Fuerza Regida alleges it “was never free from a binding personal services obligation – not for a single day, not for a single hour” across that sequence.
The band contends its obligations have run “continuous and uninterrupted” since 2018, and that the maximum enforceable term “expired no later than February 1, 2025.”
The label countered that each later contract was a separate, superseding deal whose terms should not be aggregated toward Section 2855‘s seven-year limit.
Rancho leaned on a 1981 ruling, Manchester v. Arista Records, arguing that a later contract restarts the clock unless it was struck near the first and appears designed to sidestep the statute.
Fuerza Regida pointed to de la Hoya v. Top Rank, a 2001 case holding that a fresh seven-year term begins only when an artist is free of any existing contract and able to test the open market.
Judge Vera found the band’s claim survived under either reading, so he declined to choose between them.
He noted the trial-court decisions “are not binding,” and that he “has been unable to find any direct authority from the Ninth Circuit that would resolve this central question as a matter of law.”
The judge credited the band’s own allegation that it had briefly been “simultaneously under two exclusive personal services obligations at the same time by the same label,” because the 2022 settlement terminated the 2018 deal only after the 2021 agreement had taken effect.
Judge Vera was less receptive to the band’s other counterclaims.
He dismissed the standalone damages claim after Fuerza Regida conceded that “[s]ection 2855 is not a claim” and contains no express damages provision.
He threw out an unfair-competition claim on the basis that Fuerza Regida, a corporate entity, could not use that law over a private business dispute that did not affect the public.
Two unjust-enrichment claims, against Rancho and Humble Talent Agency, were dismissed as duplicative of the band’s contract claims. Two related constructive-trust claims were dismissed, but with leave to refile.
Section 2855 has surfaced in music-industry fights before, but has rarely produced a definitive answer.
Enacted in 1937 and best known from actress Olivia de Havilland‘s 1944 victory over Warner Bros., the statute caps personal-services contracts at seven calendar years.
A 1987 amendment lobbied for by the RIAA carved out recording artists, letting labels sue for damages over albums left undelivered if a performer invokes the rule to leave.
Courtney Love cited the statute to try to exit her Geffen contract after Universal Music Group sued her in 2000, in a fight that ended in a settlement.
Thirty Seconds to Mars raised the same defense when EMI sued the band for $30 million in 2008, and that case settled the following year.
Because those disputes were resolved privately, the statute’s application to modern recording deals – and to the contract-stacking question now before Judge Vera – remains largely untested in published rulings.
The order is not a final decision, and district-court rulings on motions to dismiss do not set binding precedent.
But it keeps Fuerza Regida‘s claim alive and, absent a settlement, points toward the kind of ruling on Section 2855 that its most prominent predecessors avoided.
The band’s counterclaims also name Cinq Music Group, which took an equity stake in Ortiz Paz‘s Street Mob Records, as a counter-defendant.
Barring a settlement, the surviving claim and Rancho‘s own breach-of-contract case against the band now head toward discovery and a possible trial.Music Business Worldwide
