Lawsuit
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Tekashi 6ix9ine is looking to be compensated for the injuries he suffered at LA Fitness. The infamous rapper has field a lawsuit against the chain and is seeking seven figures in damages.
As reported by XXL Magazine the rapper turned federal informant is suing the Irvine, CA. based company over an incident that took place in 2023. While finishing up a workout at their Lake Worth, Fl. location he was attacked by three men in the bathroom. He was left bloody with visible injuries to his face. While it is unclear why they assaulted him it is speculated the individuals took issue with him taking the stand on his former associates and gang affiliates the Nine Trey Gangsters.
On Wednesday, Jan. 15 he filed legal complaint and named Fitness International LLC., which operates as LA Fitness, as the defendant. In the paperwork 6ix9ine alleges the gym chain “knew or should have known that LA Fitness was located in an area where crime statistics, including violent crime had increased substantially in recent years.” The document would also read that the “defendant had a duty to adopt and implement reasonable security measures commensurate with all attendant circumstances, including the prevalence of criminal activity at LA Fitness and the surround ding area.”
6ix9ine says that as a result of the attack he suffered “bodily injury, pain and suffering, disability, humiliation, medical expenses, loss of income, and diminished quality of life.” He is seeking a million dollars in compensation for his suffering as well as legal fees, etc. LA Fitness has yet to formally respond to the matter. You can read the complaint here.
Tekashi 6ix9ine has filed a lawsuit against LA Fitness, claiming the gym chain is legally responsible for a 2023 “violent assault” in which he was attacked in the sauna at one of the company’s South Florida locations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Jan. 15) in Florida court, the controversial rapper (Daniel Hernandez) says LA Fitness owes him more than $1 million in damages over the March 2023 attack by three assailants, which he says left him hospitalized.
Attorneys for Tekashi say the gym failed to prevent the attack, including by “failing to implement reasonable security measures” and taking other steps that might have stopped it.
“As a direct and proximate result of the negligence … Hernandez was brutally beaten, assaulted and robbed, suffered bodily injury and resulting pain and suffering,” his attorneys write.
In the days after the incident, three men — Rafael Medina Jr., 43; Octavious Medina, 23; and Anthony Maldonado, 25 — were arrested and charged with carrying out the attack. According to court records, both Medinas quickly reached plea deals with prosecutors and were released on probation; the charges against Maldonado were later dropped entirely.
In his lawsuit Wednesday, Tekashi said the assailants were members of the Latin Kings criminal gang — and that LA Fitness should have had measures in place to prevent entry of “affiliates of violent gangs” and people with “aggressive and dangerous propensities.”
“Defendant … knew or should have known that LA Fitness was located in an area where crime statistics, including violent crime, had increased substantially in recent years,” his lawyers write. “Defendant had a duty to adopt and implement reasonable security measures commensurate with all attendant circumstances, including the prevalence of criminal activity.”
A representative for LA Fitness did not immediately return a request for comment.
The 2023 attack was hardly Tekashi’s first dust-up with criminal gangs.
Once a rising star in the world of hip-hop and social media, Tekashi was charged in November 2018 with federal racketeering and murder conspiracy charges over his involvement with a New York street gang called Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. Prosecutors claimed the gang “wreaked havoc on New York City” by “engaging in brazen acts of violence.”
But just a day after being arrested, Tekashi cut a deal with federal prosecutors to flip on his crew in return for lenience. Taking the witness stand during a 2019 trial, he offered detailed and frank testimony about his involvement in the gang and his former gang mates.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Tekashi was sentenced to two years in prison and five years of supervised release. The sentence was set to run until July 2020, but Tekashi was released early, in April 2020, after his attorneys argued that the coronavirus pandemic posed an increased risk to him because he has asthma.
Tekashi recently spent another month in prison after prosecutors accused him of breaking the terms of his supervised release.
Nelly is asking a federal judge to punish the lawyers who recently sued him over his 2000 debut album Country Grammar, arguing the case is “objectively frivolous” and should “never have been brought in the first place.”
The lawsuit, filed last year, claims Nelly (Cornell Haynes) has failed to pay his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali for his work on the album. But in a new motion Thursday (Jan. 16), Nelly’s attorneys say those decades-old allegations are so “baseless” that Ali and his lawyers must face legal penalties for filing them.
“Plaintiff and his counsel should be sanctioned in the full amount … that Haynes has been forced to incur in defending this action,” the rapper’s lawyer Ken Freundlich writes. “That is because plaintiff’s claims should never have been brought in the first place.”
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Freundlich says that if Ali’s attorneys (Gail M. Walton and Precious Felder Gates) had done “even the barest factual investigation and legal research,” they would have found fatal flaws in the lawsuit — most notably that it was filed years after the statute of limitations had expired. Instead, he says they doubled down after such shortcomings were exposed.
“Plaintiff and his counsel’s failure to withdraw their fatally flawed claims, and their insistence on pressing forward with frivolous assertions and legal arguments require a substantial sanction,” Nelly’s lawyers write. “[This is] not only to compensate Haynes for the substantial legal fees and expenses he has been forced to incur in defending this action, but also to deter plaintiff and others who would flout the Copyright Act’s rules and clear undisputed court precedent.”
In a response statement to Billboard on Thursday, Felder Gates said Ali’s legal team would “vehemently defend” against Nelly’s motion and would continue to pursue their client’s “undeniable right to be properly compensated” for his alleged work on Country Grammar: “It is both unethical and unlawful for artists and their corporate partners to exploit the creative work of writers, deceiving them out of their rightful credits and fair compensation.”
Nelly rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of St. Lunatics, a hip-hop group also composed of St. Louis high school friends Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb). With the June 2000 release of Country Grammar — which spent 5 weeks atop the Billboard 200 — Nelly broke away into a solo career that later reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles “Hot in Herre” and “Dilemma.”
In a copyright lawsuit filed in September in Manhattan federal court, all four of those bandmates accused Nelly of cheating them out of compensation for contributions they allegedly made to Country Grammar. They claimed that he had “manipulated” them into falsely thinking they’d be paid, then never made good on the promises.
But a month later, the lawsuit took a strange turn: Nelly’s lawyers filed a letter warning that Lee, Kyjuan and Spud had never actually wanted to sue Nelly and that they had not given legal authorization to the lawyers who filed the lawsuit to include them as plaintiffs.
“They are hereby demanding you remove their names forthwith,” Nelly’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Walton. “Failure to do so will cause them to explore any and all legal remedies available to them.”
In November, Ali’s attorneys filed an updated version of the lawsuit listing only him as a client and vowed to fight on: “While others may have chosen to withdraw, his dedication to his artistic legacy and his rights as a creator remains unwavering,” Felder Gates said in a statement to Billboard at the time.
But in Thursday’s motion, Nelly’s attorneys argue that the case has deeper problems than simply improper plaintiffs.
They say the lawsuit was filed many years after the Copyright Act’s three-year statute of limitations had expired since Nelly had clearly “repudiated” Ali’s demand for payment years before he filed his case. And they say that when Ali’s attorneys refiled the case under just his name, they tried to sneakily remove certain dates to “hide” that fatal flaw.
“Plaintiff omits the dates of repudiation in his [amended lawsuit],” Freundlich says. “This ruse does not save the claim from being time-barred. In fact, all it does is elucidate how Plaintiff and his counsel are engaging in sanctionable conduct.”
As a penalty, Nelly’s lawyers want the judge to order Ali and his attorneys to repay all legal fees and other costs that the star has incurred defending the case. Even for just a few months of copyright litigation, that figure could reach thousands of dollars when top law firms are involved in a case.
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Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court for failing to pay two Black Georgia election workers he defamed, spurring online mockery.
On Monday (January 6), a federal judge held Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate in turning over personal assets awarded to two Black women who served as poll workers in the state of Georgia. Giuliani had accused them of interference in the 2020 presidential election. The former mayor of New York City, citing health issues, was present to hear the ruling via video conference. After being admonished by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman for interrupting his own counsel, Giuliani did not return after the court took a recess for lunch. Giuliani was ordered to pay Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss 148 million dollars in a verdict decided last year for defamation.
“The defendant has been attempting to run out the clock,” Judge Liman said before stating that he wasn’t concerned with the 80-year-old’s insistence that he had numerous other obligations, noting that he “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of the court.” “The fact that he is a busy person and relied on others is not an excuse,” he said. The ruling of contempt also stated that Giuliani had deliberately blocked attempts by the legal team representing Moss and Freeman to determine his true primary address, which for years was a 10-room penthouse cooperative apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Other assets of the disbarred lawyer include a 1980 Mercedes-Benz convertible, 26 designer watches and rare New York Yankees collectibles, which include a rare jersey worn by Hall-of-Famer Joe DiMaggio.
Another asset, a condo in Palm Beach, Florida which is valued at $3.5 million, is the subject of another federal court hearing that Giuliani is set to appear at on Friday (January 10). Liman stated during the hearing that Giuliani’s attempts to dodge verification of his primary residence would allow the court to draw negative conclusions about his testimony in that hearing. The ruling earned Giuliani a bevy of comments mocking his situation on social media, particularly noting that the decision came on the fourth anniversary of the January 6th insurrection and the Trump advisor’s response to the courtroom sketch artist’s depiction of him.
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A bombshell lawsuit brought by a former hairstylist for the Fox Sports network is alleging that former network host Skip Bayless offered to pay her a high sum for sex while accusing an FS1 executive of sexual misconduct. Further, the lawsuit named network co-hosts Emmanuel Acho and Joy Taylor, with claims that Taylor slept with several key figures at the network for advancement.
Front Office Sports reports that Noushin Faraji, who worked at Fox Sports from 2012 until August 2024, named Fox, Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Sports Executive Vice President Charlie Dixon, Skip Bayless, and FS1 host Joy Taylor as defendants in the lawsuit that was filed last Friday (Jan. 3).
Source: Travis P Ball / Getty (Dixon is to the right in the photo)
Among the more explosive claims, Faraji says that Bayless offered her $1.5 million to have sex with him after working with the host on the set of Undisputed and allegedly faced sexual harassment and unwanted advances from Bayless. In addition, the suit says that Bayless accused Faraji of sleeping with his former Undisputed co-star, Shannon Sharpe.
The suit also shares a depiction of an exchange between Faraji and Bayless where she attempted to rebuff Bayless by mentioning his wife and Bayless allegedly mentions Faraji’s Muslim faith and the assumption that her father had more than one spouse. Faraji told Bayless that her father was dead.
Faraji added in the suit that Dixon, who was the head of content for FS1, allegedly grabbed Faraji’s bottom at a West Hollywood birthday party. Faraji claims she went to Taylor to report what happened and Faraji said that Taylor allegedly told her to “get over it.”
According to Faraji’s account, she believed that Taylor and Dixon began their affair in 2016 despite both being married. Taylor allegedly invited Faraji out for a drink in Santa Monica, Calif. and when arriving to the bar, she found Taylor sitting with Dixon. Faraji claimed that the body language between the pair suggested a sexual connection. The suit also states that Taylor’s slot on Undisputed was a “reward” for sleeping with Dixon.
Source: ETIENNE LAURENT / Getty
The lawsuit also points to allegations that Taylor used sex to get herself in the door for some of the coveted time slots in the FS1 and Fox Sports space, including sleeping with Acho. Faraji claims she warned Taylor about sleeping with Dixon and Acho at the same time, a warning that was allegedly dismissed by Taylor who believed she had enough leverage to get whatever she wanted out of Dixon.
Faraji is seeking unspecified monetary damages and wants to take the matter to trial. Fox Sports has released a statement regarding the matter while Bayless, Taylor, and Acho have yet to respond to the claims.
On X, the news of the lawsuit have spread wide with reactions going all over the place and zeroing in on the more salacious aspects while largely ignoring the harm Faraji claims to have endured. We’ve got those reactions listed below.
For those who want to go through the 47-page lawsuit, click here.
[h/t Daily Mail]
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Photo: Getty
Nicki Minaj has been sued for assault by a man who claims the rapper physically attacked him following a concert in Detroit last April, according to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday (Jan. 3).
In the complaint, the plaintiff, Brandon Garrett, claims that while working as a day-to-day manager for Minaj’s 2024 Pink Friday 2 tour, the rapper (real name Onika Maraj) hit him multiple times after flying into a rage backstage at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
According to the lawsuit, the alleged assault occurred on April 21 after Garrett was summoned to Minaj’s dressing room backstage at the arena, where he says he was confronted by Minaj and her former manager Deb Antney about sending another tour employee, identified as hospitality manager Luke Montgomery, to pick up prescriptions for Minaj in his place.
“Ms. Antney asked why Mr. Montgomery was picking up prescriptions on behalf of Defendant Maraj,” the complaint reads, referring to Minaj by her birth name. “Plaintiff responded that he had Mr. Montgomery pick up a prescription in the past because Defendant Maraj wanted it immediately, but Plaintiff was occupied at the venue with Defendant Maraj in the quick change room during a performance because one of Plaintiff’s job duties was assisting Defendant Maraj with dressing during performances.”
Garrett claims that Minaj then became “visibly upset” and “angrily screamed” at him, “Are you f—ing crazy having him pick up my prescription? You have lost your f—ing mind and if my husband was here, he would knock out your f—king teeth. You’re a dead man walking. You just f—ed up your whole life and you will never be anyone, I’ll make sure of it.” Minaj then allegedly “started yelling” at Montgomery, asking what day he picked up the prescriptions and “what exact prescriptions they were.” When Montgomery said he did not remember, Minaj allegedly “screamed” at him “to look through his phone until he finds it.”
The complaint states that when neither Montgomery nor Garrett could find the information Minaj had requested, she “asked to see Mr. Montgomery’s cell phone to read the last text message between Plaintiff and Mr. Montgomery.” After Montgomery allegedly offered up his cell phone to Minaj to read the messages, Garrett says she approached him and “got very close to his face” while continuing to yell at him.
“At this point, Defendant Maraj open-handedly struck Plaintiff on the right side of his face, causing his head to swing backwards as his hat flew off his head,” the complaint reads. Garrett alleges that at this point, several members of Minaj’s security team “swarmed in close” to them before Minaj allegedly “struck Plaintiff on his right wrist, knocking the documents in Plaintiff’s hand onto the floor.”
Garrett claims that Minaj then ordered him out of the room. After complying with her demand, he says he “ran to the nearest restroom and locked himself inside for hours,” during which he says he called his fiance to tell him what had happened. “At this point, Plaintiff’s wrist was throbbing and his face was sore, but he stayed in the restroom because he was terrified and feared for his safety,” the complaint continues. In the “early morning hours” of April 22, Garrett says he then received a text message “from a bus mate on the tour” informing him that Antney said Garrett “would not be riding the bus from Detroit to Chicago,” leaving him stranded.
After arriving back in Chicago on a flight, Garrett says he contacted the Chicago Police Department for a police escort back to his hotel “because he feared for his safety and did not know if his belongings had been removed or tampered with.” He says he filed a police report with the Chicago PD after arriving back at his room, where he allegedly remained “for the next couple days…because he was fearful and traumatized” over the incident. He says he then flew back to Detroit to file a formal police report there.
Garrett is suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery and is asking for punitive and exemplary damages and general damages, among other relief.
A representative for Minaj did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment. Antney also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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If Siri recorded your private conversation, you can expect a payment as part of a $95 million Apple settlement agreement.
Spotted on The Verge, Apple has agreed to a $95 million settlement with users whose conversations were “inadvertently” recorded by Apple’s intelligent voice assistant, Siri, and listened to by human employees.
Bloomberg reports that pending approval by a judge, eligible parties could receive up to $20 per device for up to five Siri-enabled devices.
Per The Verge:
If approved, the settlement would apply to a subset of US-based people who owned or bought a Siri-enabled iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV between September 17th, 2014 and December 31st, 2024. A user would also need to meet one other major criteria: they must swear under oath that they accidentally activated Siri during a conversation intended to be confidential or private. Individual payouts will depend on how many people claim the money, so if you apply, you could end up receiving less than the $20 maximum cap.
The Origins of The Class Action Lawsuit
The class action lawsuit against Apple began as a result of the 2019 report from The Guardian claiming Apple third-party contractors “regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex” while working on Siri quality control.
A whistleblower revealed that even though Siri activates using wake words, there were occasions where that was not the case, noting something as simple as the sound of the zipper could activate Siri.
In response to The Guardian’s report, Apple said only a few Siri recordings go to contractors. It also apologized and vowed to stop keeping recordings.
In the lawsuit, a minor and other plaintiffs said that Siri recorded them on various occasions, sometimes without them even saying a word.
Apple is not alone. Google is also involved in a similar lawsuit.
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It seems Jay-Z will have to defend his name in a court of law. A judge has denied his request to dismiss a rape lawsuit against him.
As spotted on Vulture, the Brooklyn, N.Y., native did not receive favorable news regarding a recent legal filing against him. On Thursday (Dec. 26), Judge Analisa Torres ruled that Jane Doe can move forward with her lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z anonymously. While the accuser remains unidentified, the magistrate did say that Jane Doe might have to reveal her name in the future for the case to proceed.
According to the Associated Press, Judge Analisa Torres also expressed her disproval on how Jay-Z’s legal team have handled the complaint thus far. “Carter’s lawyer’s relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client. The Court will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it,” the written order reads.
The “inflammatory language” is a direct reference to Alex Spiro’s–Jay-Z’s attorney–criticism of the plaintiff’s lawyer Tony Buzbee. In an exclusive statement to the Hollywood Reporter, the Texas-based mouthpiece commented on the judges denial to dismiss the case. “I don’t typically comment on court rulings. I will say that the coordinated and desperate efforts to attack me as counsel for alleged victims are falling flat.”
Back in October, a woman named Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against Diddy and Jay-Z claiming the two raped her at an event following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. She has since admitted that there were several inconsistencies with her original filing.
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Now that Diddy’s locked up and facing multiple lawsuits from both men and women who allege that the music icon sexually assaulted them over the decades, he has been slapped with yet another lawsuit from a woman who says she too fell victim to the now notoriously disgraced mogul.
According to TMZ, LaTroya Grayson has just filed a lawsuit against Diddy, Bad Boy Records and other entities as she claims that Diddy drugged and raped her in 2006 after she won a local radio contest in Oklahoma that sent her to one of Diddy’s infamous “White Parties” in New York City. After locking down two tickets to NYC courtesy of KJAMZ radio station, Grayson says she and her sibling attended the Diddler’s soiree and ultimately experienced the horror that many of Diddy’s alleged victims have been coping with for years.
Per TMZ:
Grayson says she and her sibling went to the party — which was changed to a “Black Party” — but were separated when entering the party … with Grayson getting in and her sibling being left outside.
Grayson says waitresses circulated around the room with premade drinks and — after she says she had only two — she began to feel sick and headed for the restroom.
Grayson says she has no recollection of the rest of the night … instead waking up at Saint Vincent’s Medical Center. When she woke up, she says she had a ripped shirt, no underwear, and most of her money was gone.
It’s important to note, Grayson remembers nothing about this assault she says happened … so, she can’t say with certainty who allegedly raped her — and, she never mentions actually seeing or speaking with Diddy at the event.
Grayson says when she got back to her hometown of Oklahoma she received an anonymous call from a woman warning her against pursing legal action against Diddy saying that his celebrity status would basically protect him and she’d be “wasting her time.” Unfortunately, it seems like the warning worked as Grayson has remained mum about the incident for almost two decades.
Naturally, Diddy’s lawyers are denying any such assault took place and have dismissed Grayson’s claim as “pure fiction,” while pointing out that she doesn’t actually remember the assault taking place. “As we’ve said before, Mr. Combs cannot respond to every baseless lawsuit and lawyer-driven money grab. He has faith in the judicial process, in which fact will be separated from opportunistic fabrications like these.”
As we’ve said before, one has to wonder how many more people will ultimately come forward with their own horror stories about “The Diddler.”
That upcoming docuseries about Diddy is going to be one helluva ride, b.
What do y’all think about this latest allegation against Diddy? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Lizzo is glad that she will not be bringing legal worries into the new year. She reveals she was totally blindsided by her former staff’s sexual harassment claims.
As spotted on Variety Magazine the singer received a favorable decision regarding a high profile lawsuit. Back in 2023 her ex stylist and dance troupe made some very damming allegations against her including sexual harassment, body shaming and fostering a toxic work environment. Earlier this month a California federal judge dismissed the case and ruled that her former dancers and stylist had no grounds to sue her (they are still pursuing damages from Lizzo’s touring company and payroll agency).
Naturally the “Truth Hurts” singer said very little about the lawsuit while the case was still open. Now that it is formally behind she is speaking up about the entire ordeal. She recently paid a visit to the This Is Keke Palmer podcast and she made it clearly she was just as surprised by the filing as everyone else was. “The hardest part about all this is that none of these things were true,” she explained. “I was completely surprised. I was very deeply hurt because these were three dancers; that I gave opportunities to. These were people that I liked and appreciated as dancers, respected them as dancers. So I was like, ‘What?!’ But then I heard all the other things, like sexual harassment, and I was like, ‘I don’t know what they’re trying to do,’ but these are the types of things that the media can turn into something that it’s not.”
In the lawsuit the troupe detailed an evening out in Amsterdam’s Red Light District where they claim Lizzo pressured them to interact with nude performers. While Lizzo denied that their account of the evening was factual, Keke responded objectively asking “Do you feel looking back on the situation that maybe your casual personality could have been misconstrued as ‘I got to do this, because this is my boss?’” Lizzo admitted that the experience has taught her how to move more tactfully when it comes to engaging with her staff. “I think that this experience taught me healthy boundaries, but to be real with you, it was such a fun night… I think there’s a time where there’s a difference between having boundaries and professional boundaries… It’s nuanced. It’s a new conversation in this industry.”
You can watch Lizzo discuss this and her upcoming new album below.