Their claims for unfair competition, unjust enrichment, and statutory damages were tossed out. But Fuerza Regida holds onto their crucial bid to declare their personal services obligations to their label, Rancho Humilde, expired under California’s seven-year rule.

The label sued the band in 2025 over what it called unauthorized performances, but Fuerza Regida countersued with allegations that the label had withheld royalties.

Now, the band’s central claim that California’s seven-year rule means their obligations to the label have ended moves forward as the only claim not dismissed by a federal judge. However, in the same ruling, District Judge Hernán D. Vera declined to decide whether that statute should free the band from their contract.

The “seven-year rule” stems from California Labor Code Section 2855, which stipulates that personal services contracts “may not be enforced against the employee beyond seven years from the commencement of service under it.”

The question at the center of the case remains: does the seven-year clock reset each time an artist signs a new contract? It’s an important detail, and one that the court described as unsettled under California law.

“Although the court has the contracts and the timeline of when they were entered into, the court does not now have all of the facts regarding the circumstances of their negotiation in order to determine whether there was an intent to avoid the application of Section 2855,” Judge Vera wrote.

Only days later, on January 1, 2022, they entered into a settlement agreement, which terminated the 2018 contract and provided a $1.8 million sum. That August, alongside a global distribution deal with Sony Music Entertainment, they amended the prior deal to extend its term to at least 2027.

The band claims its obligations have run “continuous and uninterrupted” since first signing with the label in 2018, and that the maximum enforceable term therefore “expired no later than February 1, 2025.”

But the label argued that each later contract was a separate deal that superseded the previous agreements, and whose terms should not be counted toward Section 2855’s seven-year limit.

Now, assuming a settlement cannot be reached, the remaining claim—and Rancho’s breach-of-contract case against the band—will now head toward discovery, with a possible trial on the horizon.