According to the Courthouse News Service, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming that Ozzy Osbourne swindled a former band member out of at least $2 million in royalties for songwriting on two of Osbourne’s hard-rock albums in the early 1980s, ruling that the dispute must be decided through arbitration.

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder concluded that plaintiff Bob Daisley’s claims that Osbourne used a sham company, Blizzard Music Limited (US), to withhold royalty income from him stem from songwriter agreements that require arbitration.

Daisley argued that arbitration does not apply to Blizzard US and Osbourne, the suit’s defendants, because they are not parties to the agreements.

In her ruling this week, however, Snyder found that Daisley’s claims “touch and arise from the songwriter agreements,” keeping in mind that any doubts about whether issues are subject to attribution should be resolved in favor of arbitration.

Daisley alleges that Blizzard US and an affiliated company in England, Blizzard UK, which was not named in the suit but is covered by the songwriter agreements, are alter egos of Osbourne.  Furthermore, he wants an accounting from both companies and Osbourne.

The “alter-ego allegations are sufficient to allow defendants to invoke the arbitration provision,” the judge ruled, adding that the request for an accounting from nonparty Blizzard UK underscores that Daisley’s claims arise out of the songwriter agreements.

Daisley played bass and co-wrote some of the songs on Ozzy’s classic Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman albums.

Read more at the Courthouse News Service.