A man suing Irish rock monoliths U2 in a disputed claim that he wrote one of their songs has been fined for abusing a shopkeeper in Dublin.
Dublin District Court heard that 62-year-old Maurice Kiely was arrested in a Spar shop on Abbey Street in the city centre after complaining bitterly that he did not get the correct change from a €20 purchase on April 23rd.
Judge Bryan Smyth issued a five-month period in which to pay a fine of €200 for using threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour to cause a breach of the peace.
Kiely in the care of the Simon Community with an address on Barrack Street, Dundalk Co. Louth first asked the judge if he could “offer a no contest plea.”
The accused verbally abused, disrupted and annoyed staff and customers, the court heard, before being abusive to gardai and was arrested as a result.
Kiely has brought a €12m High Court damages case against U2 Ltd, the band’s corporate entity, alleging unlawful use of the song A Man and a Woman, which he says he had written and performed for the supermodel Cindy Crawford.
The track features on 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb album but Kiely claims he composed it in 1998 and offered it to the band under terms which he says was not honoured.
Kiely alleges U2 was short of material twenty years and that he entered into an oral agreement with bass player Adam Clayton over the song.
He claims that the song would only be used on the album and would not be performed live or registered as their own composition.
U2 denies all claims made against them, and insist frontman Bono wrote the lyrics while the band’s quartet of Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. composed the music.
