Johnny Ramone’s widow has bought Joey Ramone’s brother out of the Ramones’ estate, ending a years-long legal battle between the two heirs to the iconic punk band’s legacy.
A Monday (Feb. 2) court filing from music manager Dave Frey, a former board member of Ramones Productions Inc. (RPI), discloses publicly for the first time that a settlement has been reached in the messy feud between Johnny’s wife Linda Cummings-Ramone and Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh (real name Mitchel Hyman).
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“Ms. Ramone now has total control over RPI,” writes Frey’s attorney in the court filing, first obtained and reported by Billboard. “Mr. Mitchel Hyman, who was previously the other 50 percent owner of RPI, transferred his share to Ms. Ramone per a binding term sheet agreement of November 18, 2025. Ms. Ramone owns 100 percent of the shares of RPI and has free rein to fully control RPI.”
Lawyers for Cummings-Ramone and Leigh declined to comment on Tuesday (Feb. 3). There has not yet been any final settlement paperwork filed on the public docket.
Joey Ramone (born Jeffrey Hyman) and Johnny Ramone (John Cummings), who were not actual brothers, both died in the early 2000s. A 2005 shareholder agreement split the Ramones’ legacy exactly 50-50 between each family, an arrangement that spurred years of bitter infighting between Cummings-Ramone and Leigh.
The legal war started in 2018, when Leigh initiated arbitration alleging Cummings-Ramone was using the band’s intellectual property on social media without permission. Cummings-Ramone responded by accusing Leigh of mishandling the estate by making business decisions out of self-interest. In 2019, an arbitrator ordered the two to make peace and get each other’s approval for business moves.
Then in 2023, Cummings-Ramone initiated new legal proceedings seeking to remove Frey, who had been appointed to the estate’s board by Leigh. Cummings-Ramone alleged Frey had violated the shareholder agreement by developing a Ramones biopic without her permission and sharing confidential information with catalog fund Hipgnosis.
An arbitrator sided with Cummings-Ramone at the end of 2024 and kicked Frey off the board, ruling that he had engaged in “disruptive and negative conduct” with the biopic and other Ramones-related endeavors. The movie, a Netflix project that had attached Pete Davidson to play Joey Ramone, has since been put on hold.
A judge upheld that arbitration decision this past July and said both Frey and Leigh were liable for breaching their fiduciary duties, with the next step being a trial to determine possible financial damages. Frey continues to actively litigate against Cummings-Ramone – hence Monday’s court filing – but Leigh has opted instead to finally lay down his sword with a settlement to exit the Ramones estate.