Mariah 'may sue record label'

Mariah Carey's lawyer is threatening legal action against the record label which ended the singer's contract in a £19.6m buy-out.

Marshall Grossman has accused EMI of acting outside the buy-out agreement by announcing that it had been "terminated".

Mr Grossman told the New York Post he is considering suing EMI.

He says the two sides had agreed to use the word "cancelled" in describing the end of the contract in a press release issued simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic.

EMI followed London Stock Exchange rules by disclosing the deal in a separate announcement hours before Americans were awake and saying the contract had been "terminated".

Mr Grossman said: "It's simply deplorable. The issuance of that release was a direct violation of the terms of the agreement which prohibited any further statement by either side."

The 31-year-old diva was bought out by EMI's Virgin Records after her latest album, Glitter, flopped in the wake of the film of the same name, selling just 500,000 copies in America, compared to an average eight million for her previous albums.

Her lawyer also claimed yesterday's statement was wrong because it did not mention the £14.7m Carey kept for making the failed Glitter album, minimising the losses suffered by EMI.

Mr Grossman's calculation would make her total settlement worth £35m, exactly the figure which EMI denied at the beginning of January when it was first reported.

EMI's lawyer, Bert Fields, said the label had done no wrong, adding: "They were upset by the use of the word 'termination' in that statement because it implied that we said Ms Carey was unilaterally dumped. But that is not the case. The use of 'terminated' is perfectly consistent with the use of cancelled'."