Mike Love's string of lawsuits against his former Beach Boys mates was dealt a blow late last week, as a federal judge dismissed his claims against Brian Wilson over a 2004 promo CD Wilson made of rerecorded Beach Boys songs.

The Beach Boys on the roof of the Capitol Records building

US District Judge Audrey Collins ruled that Wilson had not breached a fiduciary duty to Love, his cousin and one-time collaborator, both because he was not required to inform Love of the CD and that Love was unable to prove that a fiduciary duty even existed.

Love had filed the lawsuit in November 2005, claiming that a promotional CD of Beach Boys songs that Wilson had rerecorded "damaged existing and future sales of Beach Boys albums and tarnished the Beach Boys' trademark," according to the filing. The CD, entitled Good Vibrations, was inserted as a giveaway in the Sept. 26, 2004 edition of the UK newspaper Mail on Sunday.

The court had previously ruled on several aspects of the case, including those regarding the Mail on Sunday and its publisher. But Collins issued a new decision regarding Love's specific claim that Wilson had violated his fiduciary duty to Love.

In a stern, 17-page decision, Collins rebukes Love and states that any partnership they ever had was merely a collaboration and not a legal partnership, and that whatever business relationship the pair had ended in the 1960s.

"Most damaging to [Love's] case, when asked directly if he and [Wilson] entered into an oral partnership agreement, he simply states that they sat down and cowrote songs together and that they never entered into a formal agreement," Collins wrote. "Certainly [Love] and [Wilson] were collaborators, but [Love's] mere belief that they had a legal partnership and his repeated use of the term 'partnership' cannot substitute for evidence that a legal partnership in fact existed."

The case was one of a number that Love has filed against Wilson over the years, although this is the first time that Wilson won outright. In 1994, Love was granted $13 million for songs he claimed to have cowritten with Brian in the 1960s.

Love also sued former Beach Boy Al Jardine in 2003 over Jardine's use of the band's name in promoting his solo concerts. That case is expected to go to trial later this year.