Court proceedings to settle a lawsuit brought by Darryl Neudorf against Sarah McLachlan [ tickets ] over songwriting and production credits on McLachlan's debut album Touch resumed this week in Vancouver. Neudorf is seeking co-writing credit on the album's tracks Steaming, Vox, Sad Clown and Strange World and a producer credit on the ten-year-old album.

Neudorf's legal team contends that he was hired by McLachlan's label heads to save the album by taking McLachlan's unfinished songs and turning them into recordable material as well as assuming producer responsibilities on the album. McLachlan has testified that Neudorf did, in fact, present a number of songwriting and production ideas during the pre-production and recording phases of the album, but that she declined to use almost all of his suggestions.

The plaintiff seeks ten years' worth of royalty payments as a co-writer and producer. Touch, which was originally not released in the US, was not a strong-selling album for McLachlan, but played a role in McLachlan's ultimate signing to a major label deal with Arista Records.

McLachlan's manager Terry McBride, who is also the co-owner of her Canadian label Nettwerk Records, is expected to testify within the week.