THE lawsuit filed by Flourgon against American pop star Miley Cyrus seems to be nearing an end.

The deejay and a member of his legal team steered clear of definitive answers when the Jamaica Observer caught up with them at the launch of Rebel Salute 2020 at the AC Kingston Hotel on Tuesday.

However, New-York-based Jamaican attorney Stephen Drummond said they are “optimistic”.

“In light of everything that has taken place, we are looking forward to an amicable settlement, one that will see all sides being pleased,” Drummond told the Observer.

He declined to state whether the case was still in court or being mediated out of court.

In March last year, Flourgon filed a US$300-million lawsuit against Cyrus in the US District Court of Manhattan, New York. He alleges that Cyrus’s 2013 hit song, We Can’t Stop, closely resembles his 1988 single, We Run Things. He further accused Cyrus and her label RCA Records, owned by Sony Corp, of misappropriating his material, including the lyrics, “We run things, things no run we,” which she sings as ‘We run things, things don’t run we”.

Cyrus and her team responded with at least three arguments why Flourgon’s claim is invalid. They argued that a single lyric is not protected by copyright, that Cyrus’s use of it was fair, and that the deejay’s lyric in We Run Things is not original.

Earlier this year, Flourgon and his team earned a lifeline when American magistrate Robert Lehrburger suggested that his colleague Lewis Kaplan, district judge assigned to hear the matter, not dismiss the case on summary judgement as recommended by Cyrus’s legal team even though her ‘fair use’ defence is probably sound.

According to Lehrburger, Kaplan should halt the motion by Cyrus’s team to have the matter dismissed immediately. He added that Kaplan might want to limit any damages claimed by Flourgon whose real name is Michael May, to just the three years before he filed his lawsuit last year.

Produced by Redman International, We Run Things was one of the biggest dancehall songs of 1988. However, Flourgon did not register it until 2017.

Cyrus released We Can’t Stop in 2013.