This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Legal
50 Cent sues former lawyers over sex tape case
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 1 February 2017
50 Cent has told his current lawyers to sue his former lawyers. Though not the former lawyers he sued last year. They were different former lawyers. These former lawyers are his more recent former lawyers. Maybe somewhere there’s a team of future lawyers limbering up to sue his current lawyers as soon as they become former lawyers. It’s fun this, isn’t it?
So, 50 Cent reckons that his former lawyers Reed Smith, and in particular attorney Peter Raymond, bungled his legal battle with Lastonia Leviston who, you might remember, sued the rapper after he posted online a sex tape in which she appeared. He did so because she was the mother of the child of Rick Ross, with whom he was feuding at the time.
The Leviston litigation resulted in 50 Cent declaring himself bankrupt, though the bankruptcy didn’t – as he’d hoped – put the sex tape lawsuit on hold. A court then ordered him to pay Leviston $7 million in damages.
In his new lawsuit, which is seeking up to $32 million in damages, 50 Cent – real name Curtis Jackson – alleges that he was badly advised by Raymond, including in regard to the decision to declare bankruptcy. According to The Wrap, his new lawsuit alleges that: “Reed Smith and Raymond did not follow established legal standards in representing Jackson in the Leviston case by failing to provide effective representation and conduct proper pre-trial and trial preparation prior to the Leviston trial”.
The litigation adds that “their lack of effective representation and inadequate pre-trial preparation and preparation for trial caused Jackson to retain new counsel on the eve of trial”. And that, the rapper reckons, hindered his ability to fight the case against him.
Commenting on the new litigation – and presumably also alluding to last year’s dispute with law firm Garvey Schubert Barer, which was settled – 50 Cent’s current legal rep, Arthur L Aidala of Baratta Baratta & Aidala LLP, told Billboard: “Unfortunately, this is not the first time Mr Jackson has been required to commence litigation in connection with the past administration of his legal matters. While it would have been preferable to resolve this dispute privately and amicably, he felt it necessary to pursue this matter further. Mr Jackson is fully confident that all claims will be resolved in his favour in the near future”.
