Plaintiff in Ed Sheeran copyright case collapses during trial

During the ongoing copyright trial against Ed Sheeran by the heirs of Marvin Gaye’s co-writer, Ed Townsend, one of the plaintiffs named in the case collapsed in court during a cross-examination on day two of the trial on Wednesday.

Kathryn Townsend Griffin had to be taken out of court, which she was able to do with help from her family and those in attendance before she collapsed outside courtroom doors and was rushed to hospital.

When did Townsend Griffin collapse?

Townsend collapsed during the cross-examination of Dr. Alexander Stewart, a music professor, and musicologist at the University of Vermont.

But after just a few minutes in Stewart’s testimony, at roughly 4:15 p.m. ET, Townsend Griffin’s eyes reportedly shut, and her legs failed as she collapsed in court. Townsend Griffin was taken out of court, before collapsing again outside court doors, as cries for someone to call 911 were heard.

She was then taken out of the courthouse in a wheelchair.

After 15 minutes, Judge Louis L. Stanton announced to the court that Townsend Griffin had been taken to the hospital.

Court resumed after roughly 45 minutes of interruption.

The testimony of Dr. Alexander Stewart

Stewart testified about the similarities between Marvin Gaye’s 1973 song ‘Let’s Get It On’ co-written and produced by Ed Townsend and Ed Sheeran’s 2014 song ‘Thinking Out Loud’, saying that the chord progression of the two songs “sound very, very similar”.

Earlier in Stewart’s testimony, there was some back-and-forth arguing between Sheeran’s and the plaintiff’s camps regarding Stewart’s inclusion of a computer-generated copy of ‘Let’s Get It On’ played in comparison to the deposit copy of ‘Thinking Out Loud’ (the sheet music submitted to the music label), with Sheeran’s team claiming that Stewart altered the sheet music.

The professor also reiterated that the two songs “have the same harmonic rhythm”.

Who are the plaintiffs in the trial?

The three plaintiffs in the case are Kathryn Townsend Griffin, her sister Helen McDonald, and the estate of Ed Townsend’s former wife, Cherrigale Townsend.

In his first testimony on Tuesday, Sheeran’s team wrote in the court filing that: “The two songs share versions of a similar and unprotectable chord progression that was freely available to all songwriters.”