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A federal judge has rejected Martin Shkreli’s attempt to sue the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA over the group’s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, ruling that the maneuver violated basic court rules.
Shkreli filed court papers last week aimed at pulling RZA (Robert Diggs) and Wu-Tang producer Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh) into his long-running battle with PleasrDAO, an art collective that paid $4 million to buy the album after Shkreli forfeited it to prosecutors.
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But in a pair of short response rulings, the judge overseeing the case now says Shkreli wasn’t actually allowed to sue RZA in the case – at least not via the specific legal procedures his lawyers employed.
“Shkreli raises purported ‘counterclaims’ against Robert ‘RZA’ Diggs and Tarik ‘Cilvaringz’ Azzougarh,” Judge Pamela K. Chen writes in a Feb. 6 order. “However, counterclaims can only be asserted against an opposing party — here, the only one is PleasrDao. Furthermore, to the extent Shkreli intended to assert cross-claims, those can only made as to co-defendants, of which there are none here.”
Shkreli wants to pull RZA into the litigation because he says the Wu-Tang leader improperly sold part of the rights to the famed album to PleasrDao despite the fact that they were already contractually promised to him – what his lawyers call a “duplicate sale.”
After this week’s rejection, it’s unclear if Shkreli’s legal team will still attempt to pursue those claims. He could potentially file a so-called “third party complaint,” a legal vehicle sometimes used to add new parties to an existing lawsuit. Or he could simply file a separate case against RZA over the double-sale controversy. But either option would face its own procedural hurdles. His attorney did not return a request for comment.
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Shaolin was published just once, on a CD secured in an engraved nickel and silver box. The legendary album came with bizarre legal stipulations, most notably that it couldn’t be released to the general public until 2103 – making it one of hip hop’s enduring mysteries.
Shkreli purchased the album at auction in 2015, shortly before he became the infamous “Pharma Bro” who spiked the price of AIDS drugs. But after he was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, he forfeited it to prosecutors to help pay a huge restitution sentence. Pleasr then bought Shaolin from the government in 2021 – and has spent the last few years trying to monetize it with blockchain offerings and private listening parties.
Pleasr launched the legal battle with Shkreli in 2024, after he made threats to release the album on the internet. And last year, a federal judge said Pleasr’s case could move ahead toward trial, ruling that Shaolin might qualify as a “trade secret” that Shkreli had essentially stolen.
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Shkreli has been trying to pull RZA and Cilvaringz into the case for months. In October, he asked Judge Chen to force them to join the case, calling them “indispensable parties” to the dispute. But the judge denied that request last month, ruling that it was “astonishingly devoid of support.” So last week, he went a step further and simply sued them, doing so by filing a countersuit against Pleasr that named the two artists as co-defendants.
In it, he claimed his original deal with RZA and Cilvaringz to purchase of Shaolin gave him 50 percent of the copyright to the album immediately and promised him the other 50 percent in 2103. Instead, he said Wu-Tang had turned around and sold that share to Pleasr.
“On a date 88 years after its execution, the Wu-Tang Defendants are obligated to transfer the remaining 50% of the copyrights to Shkreli,” his lawyers write. “Now, PleasrDAO has alleged that it purchased this same interest from the Wu-Tang defendants.”
But in a ruling on Wednesday, citing her earlier decision that Shkreli’s lawyers “improperly asserted” those claims, Judge Chen closed the door on them: “the clerk of the court is respectfully directed to remove Diggs and Azzougarh as counter-defendants from the docket.”