Nelly Should Be Repaid Legal Bills for ‘Baseless’ Lawsuit Over ‘Country Grammar,’ Judge Says

A national justice says Nelly should beryllium reimbursed for hefty ineligible bills helium spent defeating a “baseless” and “frivolous” suit filed by 1 of his erstwhile St. Lunatics bandmates.

The lawsuit claimed that Nelly owed ex-bandmate Ali a chopped of royalties from the rapper’s debut medium Country Grammar. But the enactment was dropped earlier this year aft Nelly’s attorneys argued it was evidently filed years aft the statute of limitations had expired.

On Friday (Oct. 10), U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger wrote that the lawyers who filed the lawsuit should beryllium punished for doing so, saying they had pursued the lawsuit against Nelly agelong aft it was wide that they had nary grounds to sue.

“It should person been patently evident to [Ali]’s attorneys that his copyright ownership assertion was time-barred,” the justice wrote. “After being placed connected announcement that the [case] stood nary accidental of success, [Ali] did not retreat his complaint. Instead, his attorneys doubled down.”

Nelly (Cornell Haynes) roseate to fame successful the 1990s arsenic a subordinate of St. Lunatics, a hip-hop radical besides composed of St. Louis precocious schoolhouse friends Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb). With the June 2000 merchandise of Country Grammar — which spent 5 weeks atop the Billboard 200 — Nelly broke distant from the radical and started a solo vocation that aboriginal reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles “Hot successful Herre” and “Dilemma.”

Filed past year, the suit alleged that Nelly had chopped his erstwhile unit members retired of the credits and royalty payments for the deed album. It claimed the prima had repeatedly “manipulated” them into falsely reasoning they’d beryllium paid for their work.

But 3 of the St. Lunatics quickly dropped out, saying they had ne'er really wanted to writer Nelly and had ne'er fixed ineligible authorization to the lawyers who filed the case. Though Ali initially moved up alone, helium dropped the lawsuit wholly successful April without explanation.

Though the lawsuit was over, Nelly’s attorneys refused to fto Ali disconnected that easy. They asked for sanctions — meaning ineligible penalties — against Ali and his attorneys implicit a “vexatious” suit that “should ne'er person been brought.”

“Plaintiff’s counsel succeeded successful its frivolous run aimed astatine forcing Haynes to walk wealth defending Plaintiff’s ridiculous time-barred claims,” the star’s lawyer, Ken Freundlich, wrote astatine the time.

In the American ineligible system, each broadside usually pays its ain ineligible bills, adjacent including defendants who triumph a suit that they consciousness they shouldn’t person faced. Only successful uncommon cases, including arsenic punishment for misconduct, bash judges bid the loser to repay the winner’s fees.

On Friday, Judge Lehrburger said Ali’s attorneys should look that benignant of sanction, saying it should person been wide to Ali’s lawyers from the outset that the lawsuit was not viable: “Jones’s copyright ownership assertion was groundless connected its look from the clip it was archetypal asserted,” the justice wrote.

The justice heaped astir of the blasted connected Precious Felder Gates, Ali’s pb counsel, who helium said “was the driving unit down the action” and had caused Nelly to needlessly incur expenses to support it.”

Judge Lehrburger pointed retired that aft it was made wide to Gates that her lawsuit was doomed, she filed an updated mentation that tried to fell that fact. The justice said Gates had “manipulated the pleadings” by removing cardinal details astir erstwhile Nelly had rejected Ali’s assertion — the cardinal facts that would bespeak the lawsuit was excessively old.

Felder, the justice said, should look punishment for “vexatiously protracting the proceedings successful atrocious religion by her effort to obfuscate the facts she knew barred Jones’s claims and her consequent refusal to retreat the amended ailment successful the look of overwhelming arguments that the claims could not perchance succeed.”

The existent sum that Felder volition wage is unclear. The justice did not acceptable an nonstop fig and said she lone had to screen Nelly’s ineligible bills from after she re-filed her updated case. The sanctions m...