Sam Smith and Normani are heading to trial over their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger” after a federal judge rejected their latest attempt to have a copyright lawsuit against them dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu ruled Wednesday that the case contains factual disputes that cannot be resolved at the summary-judgment stage, meaning a jury will ultimately have to consider the competing claims surrounding the song.
The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, through Sound and Color LLC. They allege that Smith and Normani’s multi-platinum collaboration copied elements of a 2015 song titled “Dancing With Strangers,” including its hook and other musical components.
Smith and Normani have denied the allegations, maintaining that “Dancing With a Stranger” was created independently and that the musical elements identified by the plaintiffs are common features that should not be protected exclusively by copyright.
The case has already gone through several stages. A federal judge initially dismissed the lawsuit in 2023, but the decision was later overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025, allowing the copyright dispute to continue.
In July, lawyers for Smith and Normani again asked the court to throw out the case, arguing that the plaintiffs could not establish the necessary similarities between the two songs and had not shown that the defendants had access to the earlier recording.
Judge Hsu has now rejected that request.
In his 27-page ruling, Hsu found that the plaintiffs had presented enough evidence to create a genuine factual dispute concerning “striking similarity” and independent creation, preventing the court from ruling in Smith and Normani’s favor without a trial.
The plaintiffs, however, still face a significant legal hurdle. They have abandoned an earlier argument that Smith and Normani or their collaborators had access to the 2015 song through widespread distribution. As a result, their case now relies heavily on demonstrating that the two works are sufficiently, or “strikingly,” similar under the applicable copyright standard.
The defense has argued that the similarities identified by the plaintiffs involve only a handful of common musical elements. Their lawyers have also questioned whether certain portions of the earlier song are themselves protected by copyright, pointing to alleged unauthorized samples within the 2015 recording.
The court’s latest decision does not establish that Smith or Normani infringed copyright. It simply means the dispute cannot be resolved at this stage and will proceed toward a jury trial, where the competing evidence and expert opinions can be considered.
Released in January 2019, “Dancing With a Stranger” became one of Smith and Normani’s biggest collaborations, reaching the top 10 in several countries and becoming a multi-platinum hit.
Now, more than seven years after its release, the song’s copyright dispute is set to receive its next major examination in court.
