Lawsuit
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50 Cent is not to play with when it comes to his likeness. He is suing a New York City jeweler for using his name to sell chains.
As spotted on TMZ, the “I Get Money” rapper is coming for his coin. TraxNYC recently posted a video of a pendant that is similar to the crucifix that 50 Cent wears. “50 Cent is wearing this interesting cross and guess what 50 Cent? We made it and we made it for our customers,” he said. “We just jocked your style, I know you watch my videos and now I’m watching your s**t and jocking your s**t just like you jocked my s**t.” Maksud Agadjani went on to blatantly admit he ripped off the idea for the pendant from the G-Unit boss. “I thought it was a nice cross 50, and I thought it was nice enough for me to make.”
The post soon landed on 50 Cent’s radar prompting the MC to leave a comment on the original post. “This was a bad idea, you will regret this I promise,” to which the @traxnyc account directly responded, “yo don’t you got better things to worry about.” It seems their lack of urgency further aggravated the Queens, N.Y., native. Later that day, 50 Cent posted about it on his Instagram. “Every now and then someone does something like this.😟I don’t know why 🤷but I do know 🤨I’m a need that by Monday.” the caption read.
It appears Agadjani is trying to backtrack with a post reminding 50 Cent that crucifixes are a symbol of forgiveness. A representative for the rapper confirmed with TMZ that he is taking legal action against the shop. “Mr. Jackson takes the unauthorized use of his name and likeness for commercial purposes seriously.”
Maksud Agadjani played a jeweler in Uncut Gems. You can see TraxNYC’s original video below.
Dr. Dre is facing a $10 million lawsuit accusing him of a “malicious campaign of harassment” against a psychiatrist who says he served as a marriage counselor and mediator for the rapper and his ex-wife before and during their divorce.
In a case filed Wednesday (Oct. 9) in Los Angeles court, Dr. Charles J. Sophy claimed Dre (Andre Young) had subjected him to an “ongoing barrage of threats” after he had “worked diligently” to help him resolve his disputes with then-wife Nicole Young.
“Rather than treating the mediation process as an opportunity for healing, [Dre] decided to take his frustrations about the mediation out on Dr. Sophy — frustrations that manifested themselves in the form of a nearly year-long sustained campaign of late-night texts, threats of intimidation and violence, and homophobic rhetoric,” writes the doctor’s lawyer, Christopher Frost of the firm Frost LLP.
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The lawsuit seeks a restraining order against further harassment, as well as monetary damages that the accuser’s attorneys say should total at least $10 million. A representative for Dr. Dre did not immediately return a request for comment.
Nicole Young filed for divorce from Dr. Dre in 2020 after 24 years of marriage, citing allegations of abusive behavior that Dre vehemently denied. After another 18 months of legal wrangling, the couple finalized their divorce in December 2021 with a $100 million settlement.
According to Sophy’s lawsuit, the pair engaged him in 2018 for a “joint psychotherapist-patient relationship” in which he provided therapy and marriage counseling. After the divorce case began, he says he continued to work with the couple, along with their attorneys, to mediate the terms of the dissolution.
In February 2023, Sophy claims that after months of no contact, Dre began harassing him via text message. According to an alleged screenshot included in the complaint, in the first such message, Dre told Sophy that he had been told something “disturbing” by an unnamed person, followed by a threat: “You’re going to have to pay for that.”
Over the two months following that first text, Sophy says Dre repeatedly sent him threatening texts, accusing the doctor of “ethical breaches” and threatening to report him to medical regulators. In one, he allegedly told Sophy, “you f—ed with the wrong one”; in another, Dre allegedly said he was “not playing, trust me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dre allegedly wrote in an April 2023 text, “until you explain to me why you tried to talk [an unnamed person] into saying negative things about me to the media.” Sophy says there is “no truth behind these baseless and far-fetched accusations” and that he tried to ignore the threats, but that he eventually began to fear for his safety.
“Young, a prominent and powerful figure in the music industry with a well-documented history of violence and abuse, carried out a series of unlawful acts deliberately intended to threaten, intimidate, terrorize, and ultimately ruin Dr. Sophy personally and professionally,” the lawsuit reads.
The threats extended beyond text messages, according to the lawsuit. In one alleged incident, Sophy claims that fake FBI agents, hired by Dre, arrived at his gated community and told a security guard that they needed to “talk” with the doctor at his home.
“This incident, which occurred immediately after the initial texts were sent in February, was not a coincidence,” Sophy’s lawyers write. “It was a calculated, unlawful attempt … to threaten his physical safety and send the unmistakable message that Young can reach Dr. Sophy even in the sanctity of his home.”
The incident caused Sophy to “fear for his life” and “resort to extreme security measures,” including hiring private security and wearing a bulletproof vest. His lawyers say the “egregiousness” of Dre’s conduct eventually “compelled Dr. Sophy to seek redress and protection” in the courts.
“Dr. Sophy does not relish suing a former patient,” the doctor’s lawyers write. “Nobody should have to live in constant fear. But Dr. Sophy does — ironically, for no other reason than he tried to help Young to resolve his own family’s conflict.”
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Dre of harassment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, as well as violation of a California law prohibiting the use of force or threat of violence to interfere with someone’s civil rights. The lawsuit also claims that some of the threats were based on Sophy’s sexual orientation, meaning they violated a California hate crime statute.
Weeks after Nelly’s former St. Lunatics groupmates sued him for allegedly cutting them out of royalties for his chart-topping breakout album Country Grammar, three of the ex-bandmates now say they never wanted to be part of the lawsuit and must be removed immediately.
In a letter sent last month, Nelly’s attorney warned the lawyer who filed the case last month that Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb) had recently retained his services and had “informed me that they did not authorize you to include them as plaintiffs.”
“They are hereby demanding you remove their names forthwith,” N. Scott Rosenblum wrote in the Sept. 24 letter, which was obtained by Billboard. “Failure to do so will cause them to explore any and all legal remedies available to them.”
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The move is a major twist just weeks after Harper, Kyjuan and Webb joined fellow St. Lunatics member Ali (Ali Jones) in filing the lawsuit against Nelly (Cornell Haynes). But it also makes sense after Nelly’s performance on Sunday (Oct. 6) at the American Music Awards, where all three men joined him on stage and appeared to be on good terms.
The withdrawal of Harper, Kyjuan and Webb means that the case is now essentially a dispute between Nelly and Ali alone. Ali’s attorney who filed the case, Gail M. Walton, did not immediately return a request for comment.
A group of high school friends from St. Louis, the St. Lunatics rose to prominence in the late 1990s with “Gimme What U Got”, and their debut album Free City — released a year after Country Grammar — was a hit of its own, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200.
In their Sept. 18 complaint, the bandmates claimed that Nelly had repeatedly “manipulated” them into falsely thinking they’d be paid for their work on the 2000 album, which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200. But they said he never made good on the promises.
“Every time plaintiffs confronted defendant Haynes [he] would assure them as ‘friends’ he would never prevent them from receiving the financial success they were entitled to,” the lawsuit reads. “Unfortunately, plaintiffs, reasonably believing that their friend and former band member would never steal credit for writing the original compositions, did not initially pursue any legal remedies.”
During and after the Country Grammar recording session, the lawsuit claimed, Nelly “privately and publicly acknowledged that plaintiffs were the lyric writers” and “promised to ensure that plaintiffs received writing and publishing credit.” But decades later, in 2020, the lawsuit claimed that the St. Lunatics “discovered that defendant Haynes had been lying to them the entire time.”
“Despite repeatedly promising plaintiffs that they would receive full recognition and credit… it eventually became clear that defendant Haynes had no intention of providing the plaintiffs with any such credit or recognition,” the lawsuit read.
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An alleged victim suing Diddy for sexual assault has encountered difficulty as her lawyers requested removal from the case.
According to reports, a woman who has accused Diddy of coercing her into having sex with his guests at one of his infamous White Parties will be without her legal team. Ariel Mitchell-Kidd and Steven A. Metcalf, who were representing Adria English, filed a formal request in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday (Oct. 2) to withdraw from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences,” including receiving conflicting instructions from English on how to proceed with the case. “As a result of a fundamental disagreement between Attorneys and Plaintiff regarding almost every aspect of the litigation,” the filing stated, “including settlement demands, causes of actions in the pleadings and Plaintiff’s undermining behavior and questionable antics an irreconcilable conflict and tension has developed between Plaintiff and Attorneys.”
English, a former adult film star who performed under the name Omunique, filed a police report in Miami, Florida, accusing the embattled music mogul of sexual assault in August. Among those claims includes an allegation that she was “groomed” into sex trafficking by Diddy, aka Sean Combs, with ecstasy-laced liquor and forced to be intimate with guests at his parties in Miami and in the Hamptons. In a phone interview with the New York Times, English confirmed that she was looking for new lawyers and spoke about the conflict she and Mitchell-Kidd had. “I’m the client; you work for me,” she said.
A bone of contention was Mitchell-Kidd’s instructions to English to not talk to the media. When contacted, Mitchell-Kidd responded via text, saying: “I never lost faith in her case, just in her. Her case is great,” she continued. “My issue was with her undermining my work and going behind my back doing things incongruent to advancing her case.”
Diddy is currently being held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge ordered him to be detained until trial. Representatives released a statement on his behalf. “As we’ve said from the start, anyone can file a lawsuit without proof — and this case is a clear example of that,” the statement said. “Adria English escalated things by filing false police reports and making baseless claims, using high-profile events as a backdrop to harm innocent people.” The news comes as lawyers in Texas have reported that they’ve been contacted by other victims alleging sexual abuse by Diddy.
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NBA legend Michael Jordan has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against NASCAR in federal court in North Carolina.
On Wednesday (Oct. 2), NBA Hall-of-Famer Michael Jordan and his 23XI Racing Team joined Front Row Motorsports in filing a federal anti-trust lawsuit against NASCAR and its chairman, Jim France. The suit was filed in the Western District of North Carolina, where Charlotte is located. Jordan is also a part owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. “The France family and NASCAR are monopolistic bullies,” the teams said in the filing. “And bullies will continue to impose their will to hurt others until their targets stand up and refuse to be victims. That moment has now arrived.”
The main point of contention lies in the charter system which NASCAR implemented in 2016 which included revenue sharing and 36 guaranteed entries in the league’s Cup Series. Teams complained that they were presented with a last-minute offer 48 hours before the playoffs began. “Faced with a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and no competing opportunity for premier stock car racing in the United States, most of the teams concluded that they had to sign,” the lawsuit states. “One team described its signing as ‘coerced,’ and another said it was ‘under duress.’ 23XI Racing Team and Front Row Motorsports declined to sign the deal.
The lawsuit also disclosed a lack of transparency from France, complaining that NASCAR prevented teams from competing in other stock car races and forced them to buy parts only from NASCAR-approved suppliers. “No other major professional sport in North America is run by a single family that enriches themselves through these kinds of unchecked monopolistic practices,” the lawsuit said.
“Everyone knows that I have always been a fierce competitor and that will to win is what drives me and the entire 23XI team each and every week out on the track,” Jordan said in a statement. “I love the sport of racing and the passion of our fans, but the way NASCAR is run today is unfair to teams, drivers, sponsors, and fans. Today’s action shows I’m willing to fight for a competitive market where everyone wins.” Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins claimed that he hasn’t made a profit since joining NASCAR in 2005, despite his driver Michael McDowell winning the Daytona 500 in 2021. “We need a more competitive and fair system where teams, drivers, and sponsors can be rewarded for our collective investment by building long-term enterprise value, just like every other successful professional sports league,” he said to ESPN.
A producer who worked on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is suing the creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic, claiming they stole material from his memoir about working on the legendary album.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (Oct. 2) in Manhattan federal court, Ken Caillat and co-author Steven Stiefel call the Tony Award-winning show an “unauthorized adaptation” of their 2012 book Making Rumours — and accuse playwright David Adjmi of “flagrant and willful infringement.”
“Stereophonic copies the heart and soul of Making Rumours,” attorneys for Caillat and Stiefel write in their complaint. “The striking similarity is readily apparent right from the beginning of the show.”
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Featuring the music of Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, Stereophonic debuted on Broadway last fall, eventually winning five Tony Awards including best play, best direction of a play and best featured actor in a play.
Critics quickly noted the similarities to the infamous story of the recording session for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which featured high tensions and heavy drug usage. A reviewer for the Wall Street Journal said the play was “fictionalizing Fleetwood Mac”; another critic said the play “isn’t literally about Fleetwood Mac, but c’mon.”
In their lawsuit, Caillat and Stiefel say the hit play “presents a nearly identical story arc as Making Rumours,” told from the same perspective of a sound engineer in a recording studio, about five characters who are “undeniably analogous to the members of Fleetwood Mac.”
“Stereophonic is undoubtedly a play based on plaintiffs’ memoir Making Rumours because substantial similarities exist between the two works, a reality that has been independently confirmed by those familiar with plaintiffs’ book who have also had the opportunity to review the play,” the duo’s lawyers write.
The new case presents tricky legal questions. Under U.S. law, historical events cannot be monopolized under copyrights, and nobody can claim exclusive ownership over the real story behind the making of Rumours. But specific creative elements of how such a story is told can be protected by copyrights, and film, TV and stage producers often license non-fiction books as the basis for their works.
In their case, Caillat and Stiefel claim that Adjmi copied those exact kinds of creative choices when he created his play: “Stereophonic’s audience not only sits in the same place that Mr. Caillat sat, but the show also depicts Mr. Caillat’s wild ride as it is described in Making Rumours.”
Adjmi is no stranger to copyright litigation. Back in 2014, he filed a preemptive lawsuit over his off-Broadway show called 3C, which riffed on the sitcom Three’s Company. In that case, filed after the sitcom’s owners threatened litigation, Adjmi argued the play was clearly a legal parody of the earlier show. And he eventually won, securing a ruling that his play was a legal “fair use” of the famous show.
In their complaint, Caillat and Stiefel noted that earlier case, but pointedly argued that such a defense would not work this time around: “Stereophonic is not a parody, and it is not in any way a fair use of Making Rumours.”
Reps for Adjmi did not immediately return requests for comment.
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Lauryn Hill was the target of a lawsuit from her Fugees bandmate, Pras Michél which alleges that the celebrated rapper and singer breached a contract that sank plans of a reunion tour among other claims. Lauryn Hill fired back with comments herself, shooting down Pras Michél’s claims immediately after.
Variety exclusively reports that Pras Michél filed the lawsuit on Tuesday (October 1) in federal court, alleging instances of fraud and a breach of contract in connection to a 2023 tour featuring all three members of the Fugees which includes Wyclef Jean.
From Variety:
In a scathing lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, Michél alleges that Hill grossly mismanaged the setup, marketing and budgeting of their scuttled 2023 tour, which “was actually a veiled and devious attempt to make a big score for herself,” the complaint states, adding that the singer then secretly siphoned off money from the tour guarantees. The full list of claims also include breach of fiduciary duty and refusal to permit an audit of the Fugees’ tour.
After the report was published, Lauryn Hill issued her version of events via a statement to the publication:
In a statement to Variety, Hill calls Michél’s suit “baseless” and “full of false claims and unwarranted attacks.” The Grammy-winning artist adds that Michél’s complaint, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, omits that her former bandmate “was advanced overpayment for the last tour and has failed to repay substantial loans extended by myself as an act of goodwill.” (Michel’s suit does note that he did not make money on the 2023 tour that was canceled due to Hill’s vocal strain and instead is in the hole for $900,000 in unrecouped expenses.) In her statement, she adds that the 2024 tour, which was canceled by Live Nation days before it was scheduled to kick off, “was being planned whether the Fugees were involved or not.” (Michél’s suit claims that his and fellow co-founder Wyclef Jean’s involvement was a stipulation made by Live Nation.)
The publication examined the finer details of Michél’s lawsuit, with a claim stating that Hill turned down $5 million for the Fugees to perform at Coachella. The lawsuit adds the reason Hill shot down the offer was that No Doubt received top billing over the group.
The Fugees were set to hit the road earlier this summer but the tour was suddenly cancelled just days before it was set to kick off.
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Donald Trump has yet another legal issue to deal with. A Haitian nonprofit organization has filed a lawsuit against him for his false pet eating claims.
As reported by News 5 Cleveland, the Haitian Bridge Alliance has a submitted a claim against the former President and his running mate JD Vance. Their executive director Guerline Jozef expressed their reasoning in a formal statement. “Over the last two weeks, both Trump and Vance led an effort to vilify and threaten the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio,” Jozef wrote. “Together, they spread and amplified the debunked claim that Haitians immigrants in Springfield are eating cats, dogs, and wildlife.”
The organization’s attorney Subodh Chandra detailed how Trump and Vance’s claims have forever negatively impacted the Haitian community in Springfield. “If anyone else had disrupted public service, made false alarms, and engaged in telecommunications harassment in the manner Trump and Vance did with their relentless and persistent lies—even after the governor and mayor said what they were saying was false, they would’ve been arrested by now,” he said in a written statement. “They must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be.”
During the recent presidential debate Donald Trump made some baseless claims that immigrants were stealing pets and cooking them. “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump when asked a question about immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” JD Vance also promoted the false narrative and would later admit that on CNN that he is not above spreading falsehoods in order to sell in his agenda.
Neither politician has yet to formally respond to the matter. According to the Haitian Bridge Alliance’s website they advocate “for fair and humane immigration policies and provides migrants and immigrants with humanitarian, legal, and social services.” You can read more about their organization here.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs is currently behind bars at a detention facility in New York as he awaits sentencing and his legal troubles are still mounting. A new lawsuit filed by Thalia Graves alleges that Diddy and a bodyguard brutally assaulted her and that the incident was filmed.
As reported by CNN, Thalia Graves, 48, held a press conference alongside Gloria Allred on Tuesday (September 24) in Los Angeles. Graves was a former resident of Queens who encountered Diddy around 1999 and 2000 as her boyfriend at the time was a part of the Bad Boy Records executive team.
In her lawsuit, Graves says that in the summer of 2001 while at her mother’s home, she entered into a vehicle with Combs and his bodyguard Joseph “Big Joe” Sherman and accepted a glass of wine. She alleges in the suit that after having the wine, she began to feel strange after consuming the beverage.
Graves said that she eventually passed out from the wine, which she alleges was tainted with drugs, and woke up naked in a Manhattan studio with her hands tied behind her. She goes on to say that Combs sexually assaulted her and used force to keep her stationery as she tried to resist. She added that Sherman sexually assaulted her as well as she regained and lost consciousness.
While flanked by Allred, the current Texas native said that the encounter with Diddy left her physically and emotionally damaged.
“The combination of physical and emotional pain has created a cycle of suffering from which it is so hard to break free,” Graves said, through tears. “I want to continue on this journey towards recovery and healing. I’m glad that he is locked up, but that’s a temporary feeling of relief.”
While Combs’ legal team has yet to respond to Graves’ 26-page complaint, Sherman issued a statement saying that Graves’ assertion of him assaulting her were “false and baseless accusations” and added that Graves is looking to cash in on a financial settlement.
“These accusations are not only false but damaging to my character,” Sherman said. “I have never met the accuser, and I was not working with Sean Combs during the time in question. I will be pursuing legal action to address this defamation and protect my name.”
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Nelly burst onto the scene in 2000 with his debut album Country Grammar and rolled with the St. Lunatics group comprised of his childhood friends from his hometown of St. Louis. Nelly now faces a lawsuit alleging that he failed to credit the St. Lunatics for their hand in crafting his debut album.
As reported by Variety, Nelly, real name Cornell Haynes, is facing a copyright infringement for what the St. Lunatics say is uncredited and unpaid work that went into the making of Country Grammar.
The St. Lunatics collective includes Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Torhi Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan), and City Spud (Lavell Webb). The group filed the lawsuit earlier this week in New York federal court.
The outlet overlooked the lawsuit which said that Nelly and the St. Lunatics were friends since grade school and began writing songs together in the 1990s. They then signed separately to deals at Universal Music Group and the lawsuit claims that the St. Lunatics contributed heavily to Country Grammar. Their side said they tried to negotiate with Nelly regarding the crediting and were allegedly told things would move forward but in 2020, they discovered they were duped and that he took full credit for their work.
The St. Lunatics said they learned of their missing credits after Willie Woods Jr. filed a lawsuit in 2020 demanding royalties for his contributions to the hit single “Ride Wit Me” which opened the door for the latest legal actions. It appears that Nelly himself didn’t shoot down the St. Lunatics but instead, his legal representatives, which promoted the group to assert that the rapper never intended to give them proper credit.
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