The security guard who failed to convince a jury Cardi B assaulted her outside a Beverly Hills doctor’s office is asking for a new trial – but Cardi’s lawyers are blasting the request as “absurd” and “entirely frivolous.”
In a withering response filed late Wednesday, lawyers for the “Outside” rapper wrote that Ellis “fails to establish any permitted grounds” for a new trial in her motion filed Oct. 31. They said her request was based on “patently false” allegations ranging from “gratuitous” to “complete fiction.” Urging the court to reject it, they argued “speculation, knowingly false statements, and inaction are not grounds for a new trial.”
Ellis’ lawyer, Ron Rosen Janfaza, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. In his motion, he claimed his client deserves a new trial due to alleged errors by the court and the claim that jurors might have been present outside the courthouse on Sept. 2 when a gossip blogger shouted questions at Cardi regarding her current relationship and pregnancy, and she responded by tossing a pen at the ground in apparent frustration. The incident was caught on video.
“Plaintiff requests additional time to investigate this further. Jurors would be intimidated if they had viewed this type of conduct,” Rosen Janfaza wrote. In their opposition filed Wednesday, Cardi’s lawyers argued Ellis is relying on hearsay, and either way, the jury was instructed multiple times that they should consider only evidence presented at the trial. The lawyers, Peter Anderson and Lisa F. Moore, said Ellis also failed to raise any concerns about the exchange at the time.
“If Mr. Rosen Janfaza believed a juror might have been outside the courthouse and standing with the press, he could have asked that the court instruct them yet again to consider only the evidence admitted at trial. Or Mr. Rosen Janfaza could have asked that the court question the jurors about what they saw or heard during the lunch break. He did neither, presumably because there was no reason to think any jurors were outside the courthouse at the time, let alone standing nearby,” Cardi’s lawyers wrote.
Jurors needed only an hour of deliberation to hand Cardi a resounding victory on Sept. 2. They said Ellis failed to prove her claims that the rapper, born Belcalis Almánzar, assaulted her outside a doctor’s office on Feb. 24, 2018, allegedly cutting her left cheek with a fingernail. Both sides agreed the women got into a verbal confrontation because Almánzar believed Ellis was filming her outside the obstetrician’s office while she was secretly pregnant with her first child with Migos rapper Offset. Almánzar hadn’t yet told her parents she was expecting, and she considered Ellis’ actions to be a violation of her privacy surrounding something “sacred,” her lawyer argued.
During her two days on the witness stand. Almánzar was adamant she did nothing wrong. She claimed Ellis was the one who stalked her down the hallway and backed her up against a wall. In colorful testimony that spawned several viral one-liners, Almánzar said she and Ellis engaged in a “verbal altercation” only. “She didn’t hit me. I didn’t hit her. There was no touch,” she testified.
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In his motion for a new trial, Rosen Janfaza also alleged that Almánzar “intentionally hid” the identity of the obstetrician and medical office assistant who ended up intervening in the altercation and testified in her defense. For that reason, he argued the witnesses should have been excluded.
On the witness stand, Dr. David Finke and receptionist Tierra Malcolm told jurors they ran outside their office when they heard the commotion. They said Ellis had a phone in her hand and appeared to be the aggressor. Malcolm testified that a few months after the incident, Ellis called and asked if she would assist her with some type of claim related to the incident. Malcolm said she declined. “I didn’t think if I told my truth [that] it would help her,” she testified. In her own testimony, Almánzar said she only visited Dr. Finke that one time, randomly, as a precaution while traveling in Los Angeles. For that reason, she wasn’t sure of his name in the early stages of the lawsuit, she said.
“[It] is undisputed that defendant’s counsel learned of the doctor’s name by repeatedly going office-to-office in his building,” Almánzar’s lawyers wrote in their Wednesday filing. “Importantly, plaintiff knew all along the identity of the doctor and his receptionist who intervened. Plaintiff was working as a security guard at the building, and shortly after the incident, plaintiff tried to enlist Ms. Malcolm in plaintiff’s scheme to sue defendant.”
A hearing on the motion for a new trial is set for Dec. 5. After winning the civil matter, Almánzar released special “Courtroom Edition” CD covers for her sophomore album, Am I the Drama?, which showcased her viral moments and hairstyles during the trial.
From Rolling Stone US
