Independent artists' Suno and Udio lawsuit adds the firm that beat Big Tobacco

The independent artists suing Suno and Udio just brought in heavy artillery. On June 22, 2026, Hagens Berman, the firm that took on the tobacco industry and won, joined the class action and filed an amended complaint against Udio in New York.

Who Hagens Berman is, and why Suno and Udio should worry

Hagens Berman represented 13 US states in what it calls the largest recovery in litigation history, a settlement with the tobacco industry it values at $260 billion. Co-founder Steve Berman served as special assistant attorney general in the case behind that recovery. This is not a boutique music-law outfit. It’s one of the most feared plaintiffs’ firms in the country, and it just signed on to a music-AI case.

Berman didn’t soften the framing.

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We believe that Udio and Suno have blatantly stolen works from millions of independent artists and have violated the terms of online platforms in order to do so.

Why this is the artists’ case, not the labels’

This is the part worth being precise about. The case is separate from the RIAA lawsuits brought by Sony, Universal and Warner. It was first filed in June 2025 by country musician Tony Justice, a full-time truck driver whose song “Last of the Cowboys” has topped 8 million streams, alongside his label 5th Wheel Records and My Heartland Publishing. Krystle Delgado of Delgado Entertainment Law remains lead counsel.

The whole premise is that independent artists make up the bulk of the music in these training sets but were left out of the label fight, and the backing is loud: nearly 1,300 creators signed the public statement, including Anthony Fantano, Benn Jordan, Curtiss King and Venus Theory. The full picture sits in the case tracker. As Berman put it, independent artists “represent the heart and soul of the music industry, and in the landscape of AI, they stand to lose the most.”

What the amended Suno and Udio complaint argues

The amended complaint against Udio, filed in the Southern District of New York, calls the company’s conduct “not only unlawful, but an unconscionable attack on the music community’s most vulnerable and valuable creators.” The breach-of-platform-terms angle matters: it argues Suno and Udio didn’t just copy, they violated the rules of the sites they pulled from.

Suno is sued in Massachusetts, Udio in New York, two complaints, one campaign. A separate group of independent artists, led by songwriter David Woulard, is running its own class actions in Illinois through the firm Loevy & Loevy, adding biometric and voiceprint claims. The arrival of a firm with Hagens Berman’s record signals the plaintiffs are building for the long fight, not a quick settlement.