Lawyer defamed by ‘90s hip-hop mogul wins separate defamation verdict for photographer
A jury also hung in the fraud trial of the wife of a former Nigerian senator. Also, the racism sanctions motion in OMG Dolls v. OMG Girlz is in and a notorious O.C. murderer is getting out of prison.
A man who can claim responsibility for some of the biggest sounds of the 1990s and 2000s largely won a civil trial this week in a lawsuit brought by a photographer who sought $150 million for photos of hip-hop stars that a federal judge had already concluded he’d stolen from her.
Jurors awarded nothing in damages against Roc-A-Fella record label co-founder Damon “Dame” Dash for the 100,000 photos, which plaintiff’s attorney Christopher Brown had argued were valued at $1,500. They also rejected a civil sexual battery claim, and they awarded far less on a defamation claim than the $840,000 suggested: Just $15,000, with another $15,000 in punitive damages.
But the albeit meager defamation verdict in favor of plaintiff Monique Bunn carries a distinct honor for Brown.
The partner with Boston-based Brown & Rosen LLC has now secured two defamation verdicts as a plaintiff's lawyer against Dash, described in hip-hop blogs as his “nemesis,” and he himself has also been the prevailing plaintiff in a third defamation lawsuit.
Less than three months ago, a jury in the same downtown Los Angeles federal courthouse where Brown tried Bunn’s case awarded him $100,000 after concluding Dash defamed him with a series of comments calling him a con artist and “a lawyer helping bad people steal money from good people.”
And in March 2022, Brown was the attorney in the Southern District of New York defamation trial that ended with a jury concluding Dash had defamed film director Josh Webber during a falling out over Dash’s failed involvement in the 2018 movie “Never Heard.” Webber was awarded $400,000 in compensatory damages for the defamation and $375,000 in punitive.
Brown cited the verdicts when arguing for punitive damages on Thursday, telling jurors their verdict on Wednesday was “strike three.”
“They know what defamation is. They know what they’re doing,” Brown said of Dash and Horn. “It hasn’t stopped them in the past.”
The jury’s defamation finding included a finding of malice, which Brown’s attorney Felton Newell of Sanders Roberts LLP argued would be a big enough deterrent for Dash and his co-defendant and girlfriend, Raquel Horn.
The jury ended up awarding $5,000 each against Dash, Horn and Dash’s company Poppington LLC.
The defamation stems from a video the couple posted online in which they said Bunn robbed them. Dash had flown Bunn out to L.A. from Pennsylvania to shoot photos for his companies, but he and Horn grew upset over Bunn spending $3,000 of Dash’s money on equipment at the Apple Store, and Bunn left their home without ever retrieving her photography equipment and extensive portfolio of hip-hop stars, like Mary J. Blige, Sean Combs, Outkast, Queen Latifah and The Fugees.
Bunn also said Dash had touched her sexually while she was sleeping in a room in his house the night before, which he denied in testimony.
Dash himself was one of music’s top powerbrokers back in the 1990s and 2000s, managing Jay-Z earlier in his career and signing Kanye West to Roc-A-Fella in 2002, before it was acquired by Def Jam. He and Jay-Z had a big falling out that’s the stuff of legend in the hip-hop world, including a recent settlement in a lawsuit over Dash attempting to sell part of the copyright to Jay’s smash debut album “Reasonable Doubt” as a non-fungible token.
Brown’s final question to Dash: “Can you tell me why you rejected Jay-Z’s $1.5 million offer to sell Roc-A-Fella?” Dash never answered because U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee sustained Newell’s relevancy objection.
I didn’t see Dash’s testimony on Monday for the first phase on the trial, but he was on the stand for the punitive phase when I walked into Judge Gee’s courtroom Thursday morning, being pressed about his assets by Brown.
As has been widely reported, Dash has a $12 million tax debt from 2002. He testified Thursday that he pays $250,000 a year in child support, including paying for his children’s school, but “I gotta go get a downward modification” on the amount.
Brown repeatedly pressed him about his various business ventures, with Dash at one point retorting: “Just because you own a company doesn’t mean it’s profitable, bro. Just like just because you’re a lawyer, that doesn’t mean you’re making money.”
It was a clear reference to Wednesday’s verdict, which, even with the defamation distinction for Brown, is still a big loss, particularly considering Judge Gee in April 2021 granted summary judgment in favor of the conversion claim. Brown originally sought $50 million in damages for the photos, but he later adjusted to $150 million.
Inside the low-profile L.A. trial of the former Nigerian senator’s wife
A former senator’s wife was on trial this week in Los Angeles federal court, but the trial received such a lack of coverage that the judge commented on it when warning jurors not to read news coverage.
Tamara Yvonne Motley is unknown in U.S. politics, but in Nigeria, her husband is a former senator and powerbroker. The 54-year-old Redondo Beach woman incorporated his political prominence in the notoriously corrupt country into her defense on Medicare fraud charges in U.S. District Court, with her lawyer telling jurors she was distracted with his political campaign as her employees defrauded her business.
“Her focus was on Nigeria and her husband” and their child, Chad M. Lewin said in his closing argument Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirsten Williams told the jury the government embraces the evidence about the years-long $24 million scheme involving power wheelchair repairs, but the evidence apparently wasn’t enough to persuade all jurors: They announced Thursday they were deadlocked after beginning deliberations Wednesday about 1:45 p.m., and U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld declared a mistrial. The charges include 20 counts of health care fraud, a money laundering count and two counts of aggravated identity theft.
Motley remains out of custody on $275,000 bond as the U.S. Attorney’s Office decides whether to retry her.
She’s already tried to get permission to travel to Nigeria and been rejected. U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin overturned an order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick J. Walsh in 2018 that would have allowed Motley to travel there over the objection of prosecutors, who warned: “It is typically very difficult, if not impossible, to secure the return of a defendant from Nigeria.”
Motley’s lawyer at the time described her husband, Ahmed Ogemba, as “a high profile person in Nigeria” and said it would be “nearly impossible” for her to hide because of that, but prosecutors said Ogemba’s “high profile status would only complicate extradition.”
I happened to catch closing arguments on Wednesday, in which Williams described a how Motley paid marketers to find Medicare patients for her medical equipment businesses, Action Medical Equipment and Supply, Inc. and Kaja Medical Equipment & Supplies, Inc., then used her employees to bill Medicaid for power wheelchairs the patients didn’t need. They would cook up a billing scheme “if they wanted a new car, wanted to go to Las Vegas,” Williams said.
When Medicare stopped reimbursing for the chairs in 2011, Motley changed her method and focused on repairs, said Williams, who prosecuted the case with Assistant U.S. Attorney David Chao. Witnesses included two co-defendants who have pleaded guilty, office manager Cynthia Marquez and repair technician Juan Murillo.
Lewin blamed them for the fraud, saying they stole from Motley without her knowledge and are now wrongly blaming her for their crimes. He said testimony shows Motley was good at marketing and sales but “there has been no evidence in this trial that she was good at anything else.” He called his client “just a foolish and careless business person.”
“They evidence seems pretty clear that they stole from her,” Lewin told the jury.
Lawyers want opposing counsel sanctioned for calling trial tactics racist
The sanctions motion is in toymaker MGA Entertainment’s trade dress lawsuit with rapper T.I. over the L.O.L. Surprise OMG Dolls and the T.I.’s stepdaughter Zonnique’s music group the OMG Girls.
As I’ve reported, the first trial ended in a mistrial after deposition testimony was played that violated a pre-trial ban on claims about racism and cultural misappropriation.
T.I.’s lawyers at Winston Strawn filed after-the-fact opposition motion that called MGA lawyer Jennifer Keller’s trial tactics as “racist,” including her saying the full n-word when questioning Zonnique about her song lyrics. The back and forth has been vicious, and Keller’s law partner Chase Scolnick is now asking Senior U.S. District Judge James V. Selna to order Winston Strawn’s Erin Ranahan to publicly apologize to Keller.
The full motion also asks Judge Selna to refer Ranahan to the Central District’s Standing Committee on Discipline, and to make Winston Strawn pay the hourly attorney fees and costs associated with the briefing related to this post-mistrial racism fight, as well as a separate issue involving emotional distress damages. That’s about $75,000.
You can read the full motion here.
One of Orange County’s most notorious murderers is getting released from prison
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer broke news Thursday night when he announced that convicted triple murderer Thomas Maniscalco has been ordered released from prison within 48 hours because he has terminal cancer.
Maniscalco’s case remains the longest-running criminal case in O.C. history. A former attorney and the founder of the Hessian Motorcycle Club, he was convicted in 1994 of three counts of second-degree murder for the Memorial Day slayings of a fellow Hessian, his bodyguard and a 19-year-old woman in 1980.
I know the case well from interviewing Orange County Superior Court Judge Rick King, who handled Maniscalco’s two trials as a homicide prosecutor. He has newspaper articles about the case framed in his chambers.
From my 2019 Los Angeles Daily Journal profile: “King handled approximately 115 jury trials as a prosecutor, including the two trials of Thomas F. Maniscalco, the attorney and bike-gang founder whose triple murder saga remains Orange County's longest-running criminal case. The 1994 guilty verdict was delivered on the 10th anniversary of Maniscalco’s arrest.”
Coming next week: Trial for ex-L.A. deputy mayor Raymond Chan
Count me in!
Chan is former Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar’s co-defendant. Huizar took a plea deal last month, but Chan is definitely headed to trial with longtime criminal defense attorney Harland Braun at the helm.
The 80-year-old Braun told U.S. District Judge John Walter during the final status conference on Wednesday that he doesn’t believe prosecutors can bring racketeering charges over political conduct. Walter’s response? “The time for that was in the last two years.”
This is going to be a great trial.
ICYMI: My appearance on a Detroit talk show went well. You can watch it here.
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