An L.A. jury has awarded legendary music producer Quincy Jones $9.42 million in damages, to be paid from the estate of Jones’ long-time collaborator Michael Jackson. The award comes after a legal case Jones has been pursuing since 2013, when he alleged that the estate had failed to pay him his share of the royalties from Jackson’s music, which surged in popularity in the wake of the superstar’s death in 2009.
Jones originally sought as much as $30 million in unpaid royalties, but today’s award is still significantly more than the $2 or $3 million the estate offered him back in 2013. Jones worked on most of Jackson’s biggest records, including Off The Wall and Thriller; much of the two-week-long trial’s arguments apparently centered on interpreting and battling over the language in the contracts for Jones’ work on some of the defining music of the modern era.