Court Case Status Page

On Wednesday, the 14th day of June, in the year 2000, the Estate of Frank J Assunto file suit against a particular individual for improprieties committed against the Assunto Family and the name "The Dukes of Dixieland".

For those of you with access to such information you can follow the progress of the case by going to the Civil District Court of New Orleans in the State of Louisiana and reference case number CDC - No. 2000-9440.

As things progress through this process we will post what we can, when we can, on this page.

MainMan

UPDATE December 2004

With our court case still proceeding after four and a half years we have much to share in the future. Meantime we should try to respond to one question that is often asked concerning our legal case on behalf of Frank J. Assunto and his heirs.

The general question asked is....What brought on this suit and what does the Assunto Family wish to accomplish?

Legal action was taken on behalf of Frank and Freddie Assunto and their Dukes of Dixieland for various reasons.  One of which is to re-coup royalties from numerous record companies.  These issues while quite complicated are being addressed without much trouble as we have settled with some but not all as of now.  The main objective of our law suit is to stop the unauthorized use of the Assunto Brothers' musical legacy and accomplishments (which has resulted in defrauding the public).  Plus the unauthorized release of pre-1974 recordings, collecting those royalties and all the
while contacting record companies with the intent to re-direct royalty payments being paid to Frank's widow who was an invalid unable to care for herself.  To obtain our objective we were forced to bring legal actions against John S. Shoup who started this operation 5 months after the death of Frank Assunto with the full knowledge that not only was Frank's widow an invalid there were 4 juvenile children also left without their father at that time.  While the issues with the record companies is pretty cut and dry, the issues with Shoup is not the same....not when you consider some of the responses by Shoup and his lawyers to our questions.  Here are two examples, when asked "what is Frank Assunto's claim to the name Dukes of Dixieland" Shoup's reply was 'none' because Frank was just another trumpet player in the band.  The second example is, in Federal Court (2000) Shoup stated that he had permission from the Assunto heirs to do the things he's been accussed of, but......after losing his case in Federal Court and the case moved to Louisiana Civil District Court in New Orleans, Shoup's defense had changed.  Now his defense is that he didn't need permission to do what he's been accused of because his group calling themselves the Dukes of Dixieland has no connection
to the Assunto Brothers' Dukes of Dixieland from the early 1950's thru 1974.....(more to come)

ANTONIO DEANO ASSUNTO, administrator estate of Frank J. Assunto