{"id":8645,"date":"2025-11-20T19:46:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T19:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/rapper-wants-78k-legal-bills-from-country-grammar-case\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T19:46:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T19:46:16","slug":"rapper-wants-78k-legal-bills-from-country-grammar-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/rapper-wants-78k-legal-bills-from-country-grammar-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapper Wants $78K Legal Bills From Country Grammar Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tNelly<\/a> is demanding that a lawyer for one of his former St. Lunatics bandmates repay more than $78,000 he spent in legal bills to defeat her \u201cfrivolous\u201d lawsuit over the rights to his debut album Country Grammar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case, filed by ex-bandmate Ali, was dropped in April after Nelly argued it was obviously filed years after the statute of limitations had expired. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the case was so bad that Ali\u2019s lawyer must repay his legal bills as punishment for pursuing it too far.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a court filing on Wednesday, Nelly\u2019s attorneys handed Ali\u2019s lawyer the tab: $78,007 in legal fees for three copyright litigators, covering 142 hours they say they spent working on the case after it was clear it should have been dropped.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThese rates are reasonable because they reflect the market rate for similar services to our quality of work in the New York City area,\u201d Nelly\u2019s attorney Kenneth Freundlich writes in the filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAli\u2019s attorney, Precious Felder Gates, will have a chance to argue for a lower fine before the judge settles on a final number. In a statement to Billboard<\/em> on Thursday, she said she still believes the sanction itself was \u201cunwarranted,\u201d saying she\u2019d \u201cacted with the honest conviction that our client\u2019s claims merited judicial consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWednesday\u2019s filing highlights the risk of filing questionable lawsuits against well-heeled defendants \u2013 and a potential weapon for top musicians who have complained about a rise in such cases. Ed Sheeran, Cardi B, Jay-Z and many other stars have warned that such lawsuits are often aimed at extracting quick settlements by exploiting the hassle and expense of litigation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case against Nelly was filed last year by members of St. Lunatics, a hip-hop group also composed of St. Louis high school friends Nelly, Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb). It centered on Country Grammar<\/em>, the star\u2019s debut solo album that spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200 and helped launch a career that reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles \u201cHot in Herre\u201d and \u201cDilemma.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe lawsuit alleged that Nelly had cut his former crew members 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 hadn\u2019t given authorization to the lawyers who filed the case. Though Ali initially moved ahead alone, he dropped the case entirely in April. That move came as Nelly\u2019s lawyers were seeking to dismiss the decades-delayed case under the Copyright Act\u2019s three-year statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the case was over, Nelly\u2019s attorneys refused to let Ali and his lawyers walk away. They asked for sanctions \u2014 meaning legal penalties \u2014 over a \u201cvexatious\u201d lawsuit that \u201cshould never have been brought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the American legal system, each side usually pays its own legal bills, even including defendants who win a lawsuit that they feel they shouldn\u2019t have faced. Only in rare cases, including as punishment for misconduct, do judges order the loser to repay the winner\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger said the case against Nelly was that kind of rare situation. He said it should have been \u201cpatently obvious\u201d to Felder Gates that the case was doomed by last November, but that she had instead \u201cdoubled down.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tFelder, the judge said, should face punishment for \u201cvexatiously protracting the proceedings in bad faith by her attempt to obfuscate the facts she knew barred Jones\u2019s claims and her subsequent refusal to withdraw the amended complaint in the face of overwhelming arguments that the claims could not possibly succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, Freundlich said he hoped the ruling \u201csends a message to lawyers that there will be consequences for dragging a defendant into an action that is frivolous on its face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWednesday\u2019s filing explained the amount that Nelly\u2019s lawyers say Felder Gates should pay under that order. Freundlich, a veteran music industry litigator, says he spent 19 hours at his rate of $725 per hour; a senior counsel at his firm, Jonah A. Grossbardt put in 88 hours at $575 per hour; and an associate, Hugh H. Rosenberg, worked 35 hours at $375 per hour.<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch rates are typical for attorneys at those levels in major law firms in New York and Los Angeles. Many lawyers at bigger firms charge even more, and complicated cases can cost millions to litigate. But the judge is not required to grant the entire request and could very well settle on a lower number.<\/p>\n

\n\tFelder Gates will have a chance to file a motion next week seeking a lower fine, but the judge\u2019s order means that she will eventually have to pay Nelly some amount of fees. In her statement to Billboard<\/em>, she continued to defend her firm\u2019s conduct in the case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur firm pursued a legitimate claim in good faith to protect rights expressly afforded to our client,\u201d she said. \u201cBased on the information available and the applicable law, we held a reasonable and well-supported belief that viable arguments existed to [extend] the statute of limitations, and we accordingly advanced those defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nelly is demanding that a lawyer for one of his former St. Lunatics bandmates repay more than $78,000 he spent in legal bills to defeat her \u201cfrivolous\u201d lawsuit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7055,1922,294,3489,3490,136,2278],"class_list":["post-8645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-78k","tag-bills","tag-case","tag-country","tag-grammar","tag-legal","tag-rapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645","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=8645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}