Sam Smith and Normani will face a jury over claims their 2019 multi-platinum hit "Dancing With a Stranger" stole its hook from a 2015 song of the same name, after a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected their latest attempt to dismiss the case.

U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu issued a 27-page ruling on Wednesday denying the defendants' motion for summary judgment, according to a copy obtained by Rolling Stone. The motion had asked the court to end the case based on evidence developed since it was first filed in March 2022.

"Plaintiffs have sufficiently introduced an issue of material fact regarding striking similarity and independent creation which precludes a finding of no copyright infringement on summary judgment," Judge Hsu wrote.

The ruling aligns with the tentative position Hsu outlined during oral arguments at a hearing on September 11. The lawsuit, filed four years ago, was dismissed the following year and later revived on appeal.

In July, lawyers for Smith and Normani again asked the court to throw out the case, arguing that experts for the plaintiff songwriters — Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda, and Rosco Banlaoi's collaborator Rosco Banlao — had failed to show the "striking similarity" needed to keep the claims alive. Hsu disagreed.

"Here, defendants would have the court compare pitch sequences alone, then rhythm alone, then metric placement alone, then contour alone. Disassemble any two works enough, and neither would resemble anything," he wrote.

Hsu noted there is no "well-defined standard" for determining when similarities in the selection and arrangement of musical elements become "striking." But he said the Ninth Circuit, the federal appeals court overseeing California, has made clear that "analyzing each element in isolation is improper."

The judge also found a "dispute of material fact" over the defendants' claim that the plaintiffs' 2015 song incorporated unauthorized samples from two other copyrighted works and therefore deserved no protection. Smith, Normani, and the other defendants, including Universal Music Group, had failed to establish that the plaintiffs' song derived from those alleged unauthorized samples, Hsu wrote.

The defendants' assertions that they created their 2019 hit independently, without access to the plaintiffs' song, did not settle the matter either.

"Evidence of independent creation is insufficient to justify summary judgment, as it must be weighed against plaintiff's prima facie case of copying," Hsu wrote. "The court finds the question of independent creation should be left for the jury to decide."

The lead lawyer for Smith, Normani, and the other defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.

"The three songwriters who are Sound and Color [the group behind the 2015 song] are gratified that the District Court has recognized that a jury should decide the musicological issues in this case to determine whether Sam Smith and defendants stole 'Dancing With a Stranger,' one of the biggest hits in 2019," plaintiffs' lawyer Alfred J. Fluehr of the firm Francis Alexander said in a statement to Rolling Stone. "Previously in the case, the Ninth Circuit came to the same conclusion … We look forward to our day in court."

At the September 11 hearing, Peter Anderson, a lawyer for the defendants, argued the lawsuit suffered from a fatal flaw: the plaintiffs' 2015 track incorporated unauthorized samples from "The Ha Dance" by Masters at Work and "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins. Copyright protection, he argued, does not extend to portions of a work that unlawfully incorporate preexisting copyrighted material.

"The two samples run throughout the plaintiff's work. Specifically, those two samples run throughout the hook, which is the only alleged similarity," Anderson said. "Plaintiff's counsel says they're virtually imperceptible. Well, that means they're perceptible."

Fluehr responded that the dispute ultimately turned on "a musicological dispute, [and] that's for a jury." Hsu highlighted that argument.

"What they're arguing here is that the protectable hook is not itself a sample," the judge said on September 11. He took the matter under submission at the end of the 45-minute hearing.

Questions about earlier musical works have shadowed the litigation for years. Before either song at the center of the dispute was released, Cyndi Lauper recorded a 1989 song titled "Dancing With a Stranger." The Eurobeat artist Regina also released "Dancing With an Angel" in 1997, which lawyers for Smith and Normani have said contains a descending melodic phrase similar to the passages now at issue.

A jury will now weigh the musicological evidence and decide whether one of 2019's biggest hits crossed the line into infringement.