Selena y los Dinos

Case Study CX005.1
Last revised: February 22, 2015
Selena y los Dinos
Justin Ward
Selena Quintanilla-Perez was born in Texas on April 16, 1971 into an English-speaking
Latino family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. (“Quintanilla”) was
an enterprising man who had spent his youth trying to make it in the Texas music scene as the
manager and a member of a band called Los Dinos. Quintanilla took a job at a chemical plant
when he settled down, but later left to open his own restaurant. During his (ultimately
unsuccessful) effort to keep the struggling business afloat, he had the musically talented nineyear-old Selena perform live music to help attract customers.
Although the restaurant failed, Selena continued to perform under the name Selena y los
Dinos. She learned to sing in Spanish and began recording with local producers. After the
eighth grade, she dropped out of school to pursue her musical career. The band remained in
many ways a family affair: Quintanilla (once described as “the ultimate stage father”) managed
the group, Selena’s brother, A.B., played bass guitar and wrote many of Selena’s songs, and she
married the band’s guitarist, Chris Perez.
By 1993, Selena was an award-winning Tejano singer and a rising star, having signed a
record deal with Capitol/EMI (which had asked Selena to release albums as “Selena,” not
“Selena y los Dinos”). She would go on to further musical success and to open a chain of
boutique stores called Selena Etc..
On February 7, 1993, Selena y los Dinos gave a free concert at Corpus Christi Memorial
Coliseum. Quintanilla produced the concert, planning the lighting and stage setup. He also
arranged for local television station, KIII-TV, to film the show, entering into an oral agreement
with Jay Sanchez, a director at KIII-TV. Before the concert, Sanchez sent Quintanilla a note
apparently intended to memorialize their agreement:
“Thank you for allowing us to videotape the concert tomorrow night. . . . As
per our agreement, we will use the video on the Domingo Show [a local music
program] and other news shows. In turn, we will provide you with a master copy
on 3/4 [inch recording tape] to use for promotional purposes."
During the concert, a crew of seven KIII-TV employees filmed the show. Four cameras fed
video to a production truck, where Sanchez selected which feed to use at any given time. The
show was recorded to videotape. Quintanilla had input into the location of the cameras and
suggested specific angles and camera zoom during the show. The sound heard on the video was
taken from a mixing console operated by audio technicians hired separately by Quintanilla.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 Justin Ward. This case study was originally written by Justin Ward. It is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License, the terms of which are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/.
Selena y los Dinos
CX005.1
After the show, Sanchez sent Quintanilla a copy of the videotape along with a second note:
“As we agreed, enclosed please find copies of the concert for your use. In exchange, we will use
the footage on the Domingo Show.”
Ultimately, audio from the Corpus Christi show (recorded separately from the video
recording) became Selena’s grammy-winning album Selena Live. Most of the songs performed
in the concert had been written by Selena’s bandmates, most notably her brother, A.B..
On March 31, 1995, Selena was shot and killed by the woman who had managed Selena’s
boutiques (and been president of her fan club) before being discharged for embezzlement.
Selena’s murder increased her fame and boosted sales of her records. A motion picture about her
life, starring Jennifer Lopez in the title role, was released in 1997.
On March 31, 1996 (the first anniversary of Selena’s death), KIII-TV aired a “Selena
Special” that featured portions of the videotape of the concert. Quintanilla believed that he and
the surviving members of the band should have been consulted prior to the broadcast – and that,
in any event, he and the band members were entitled to a share of the revenue earned by KIII-TV
from the broadcast.
On February 6, 1997, Quintanilla brought suit against KIII-TV (through its parent company,
Texas Television, Inc.) in the Southern District of Texas. The named plaintiffs included
Quintanilla and the songwriters, who were Selena’s siblings and bandmates.
Questions:
(1) What claims might the plaintiffs have asserted?
(2) What defenses to those claims might KII-TV have raised?
(3) Who would prevail?
(4) Who should prevail?