{"id":5208,"date":"2025-04-11T00:15:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T00:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ex-bandmate-drops-country-grammar-case\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T00:15:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T00:15:55","slug":"ex-bandmate-drops-country-grammar-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ex-bandmate-drops-country-grammar-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Bandmate Drops ‘Country Grammar’ Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tNelly<\/a>\u2019s former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali wants to drop a lawsuit that had accused the rapper of failing to pay him for his alleged work on Nelly\u2019s 2000 debut album Country Grammar<\/em>. But Nelly\u2019s lawyers say Ali and his lawyers must pay for bringing a \u201cridiculous\u201d case.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe action, filed last year, alleged that Nelly (Cornell Haynes) had cut four of his former St. Lunatics crew out of the credits and royalty payments for the hit album. It claimed the star had repeatedly \u201cmanipulated\u201d them into falsely thinking they\u2019d be paid for their work.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut three of the St. Lunatics quickly dropped out, saying they had never actually wanted to sue Nelly and had never given legal authorization to the lawyers who filed the case. And in recent months, Nelly\u2019s lawyers had sought punishing sanctions against those attorneys.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a motion filed Thursday (April 10), Ali and his lawyers moved to voluntarily dismiss the case. They offered no rationale for why they were doing so, and there was no indication that a settlement of any kind had been reached. They did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tNelly\u2019s attorneys aren\u2019t going to let him off the hook that easily. In a quick response, they urged the judge to refuse to dismiss the case until he decides whether Ali and his attorneys should face punishment for filing a \u201cvexatious\u201d lawsuit that \u201cshould never have been brought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff\u2019s counsel succeeded in its frivolous campaign aimed at forcing Haynes to spend money defending Plaintiff\u2019s ridiculous time-barred claims,\u201d the star\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cThe Court is respectfully requested to retain jurisdiction and set a briefing and hearing schedule for [potential sanctions].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNelly 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<\/em> \u2014 which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200 \u2014 Nelly broke away from the group and started a solo career that later reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles \u201cHot in Herre\u201d and \u201cDilemma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn September, all four St. Lunatics accused Nelly of cheating them out of compensation for contributions they\u2019d made to Country Grammar<\/em>. They claimed they had waited so long to sue because they believed their \u201cfriend and former band member would never steal credit\u201d from them.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut a month later, the lawsuit took a strange turn: Nelly\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey are hereby demanding you remove their names forthwith,\u201d Nelly\u2019s lawyers wrote in a letter to Walton. \u201cFailure to do so will cause them to explore any and all legal remedies available to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn November, Ali\u2019s attorneys filed an updated version of the lawsuit listing only Ali as a client and vowed to fight on. But Nelly\u2019s attorneys have since argued that the case is \u201cfrivolous,\u201d claiming it was clearly filed years after the statute of limitations had expired. In January, they said it was so obviously flawed that the lawyers who filed it should be punished for going to court.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff and his counsel should be sanctioned in the full amount \u2026 that Haynes has been forced to incur in defending this action,\u201d the rapper\u2019s lawyers wrote at the time. \u201cThat is because plaintiff\u2019s claims should never have been brought in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, the judge overseeing the case said he would not rule on that motion until he decided whether to dismiss the case. Such a motion to dismiss from Nelly\u2019s attorneys was pending when the case was voluntarily dropped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nelly\u2019s former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali wants to drop a lawsuit that had accused the rapper of failing to pay him for his alleged work on Nelly\u2019s 2000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,3489,1108,5466,3490],"class_list":["post-5208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-country","tag-drops","tag-exbandmate","tag-grammar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}