Cardi B won the debate. And the trial too.
A week after going viral for calling her witness-stand interrogation a “debate,” not an “altercation,” the Grammy-winning rapper was found not liable at a civil trial over claims she physically assaulted a security guard she believed was filming her.
Jurors spent less than an hour deliberating in the closely watched case. They agreed Cardi did not swing at Emani Ellis or scratch the woman’s face during a heated argument on the fifth floor of a Beverly Hills medical building seven years ago.
“I will say it on my deathbed. I did not touch that woman. I did not touch that girl. I didn’t lay my hands on that girl,” Cardi B, born Belcalis Almánzar, said as she exited the courthouse in Alhambra, California, after the verdict Tuesday. Stopping to take a few photos with fans, the Grammy-winning rapper said this time she’s “gonna be nice.” She asked her supporters to leave Ellis in peace and not “bother” her. But, she warned, that won’t be the case in the future.
“The next person who tries to do a frivolous lawsuit against me, I’m going to counter-sue, and I’m gonna make you pay, because this is not OK,” she said. “I am not that celeb that you sue, and you think it’s going to settle. I’m not gonna settle. Especially when I’m super completely innocent. I know I got a little reputation, but I swear to God, I’m innocent. I swear to God. Like, I’m really innocent for real.”
Almánzar said she missed her kids’ first day of school thanks to the trial, and she’s working late nights on her new album due out later this month. She said it wasn’t easy waking up each morning at 5:30 to prep for court. She said her forehead is “raw, raw, raw” from the selection of wigs she wore each day.
“I hope that this is something that I leave behind, that she leaves behind,” she said of Ellis.
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In his closing argument, Ellis’ lawyer, Ron Rosen Janfaza, tried to convince the panel that his client was on a routine patrol when the rapper stepped off a fifth-floor elevator on Feb. 24, 2018, fought with Ellis, and allegedly cut the woman’s left cheek with a fingernail.
Cardi’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, argued that Ellis was the aggressor. “Plaintiff went berserk,” he said in his final comments. “Plaintiff advanced on Cardi, screaming and yelling, forcing Cardi backwards.”
Both sides agreed that a confrontation erupted over disputed claims that Ellis was filming the “I Like It” rapper while she was secretly pregnant with her first child with Migos rapper Offset. Anderson said 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.”
After the closing arguments ended, the jury of six men and six women started their deliberations at 2:15 p.m. local time. They sent a note announcing that they had reached a verdict at 3:15. Though they only needed nine to reach a decision, all 12 voted the same way.
In his closing, Anderson argued that Ellis was an admitted fan who knew the platinum-selling rapper was due to visit the building that day. “From those facts alone, you can infer that she was actually lying in wait. She wanted to photograph and videotape Cardi,” he argued.
And even if the meeting outside the elevator was a chance encounter, he said, Ellis testified that Cardi B made it clear that she believed Ellis was filming her. “Plaintiff had the chance to be professional and avoid all of this by putting her phone away. That’s all she had to do. But the evidence is, she kept that phone in her hands all the way through as she advanced on Cardi B in the hallway,” Anderson argued.
During the trial, the obstetrician that Cardi B was visiting that day, along with his office receptionist, told jurors that they heard the women’s loud altercation and rushed to the hallway to intervene. They testified Ellis had her phone in her hands the entire time.
During her two days of testimony, Almánzar was adamant that she never laid a finger on Ellis. 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.
Anderson said his client’s account amounted to “common sense” because Ellis did not go to the emergency room or see a doctor immediately after the incident. She also never filed a police report.
“She did not know if the scratch that supposedly ruined her life was even bleeding,” he said, citing Ellis’ testimony last week. “She claims that Cardi mauled her, basically, cut her face, and what did she do? She went home and took a nap. That was her own testimony.”
He said the evidence, including the testimony from the doctor and receptionist, supported the defense’s claim that Ellis was the aggressor. “Cardi did not do anything wrong, except try to protect her baby and get to a doctor,” he said.
In his final statements to the jury, Ellis’ lawyer Ron Rosen Janfaza said his client wasn’t asking for the “millions” she allegedly demanded from Almánzar before the trial started. He said his client deserved compensation for her medical expenses along with $250,000 for past pain and suffering and whatever else the jury sees fit to award.
“She was abused. She was harmed. She was assaulted and battered by Cardi B, and Cardi B needs to pay for that,” he said of his client.
Ellis, 32, first sued Cardi in February 2020. In her 13-page complaint, she claimed Almánzar “violently” attacked her, spit on her, hurled “racial slurs,” and then “used her celebrity status to get [her] fired.” As the trial started last week, Ellis’ lawyer confirmed his client had dropped the employment claim related to the alleged plot to get her fired.
On the witness stand, Ellis told jurors she was conducting her routine rounds in the medical office building when she saw Almánzar exit the elevator and audibly blurted out the rapper’s name in surprise. She claimed she was not talking to anyone on her phone and never recorded the rapper.
“She was extremely upset,” Ellis testified. “She put her finger in my face.” Ellis claimed Almánzar cut her left cheek with a three-inch fingernail. “I was deeply traumatized about what happened,” Ellis testified.
Almánzar testified she was in Los Angeles for work and visited the doctor that day because she felt “weird” and wanted a pregnancy checkup. She had not yet announced she was expecting her first child with Migos rapper Offset and asked her bodyguard to wait downstairs to conceal her visit to the obstetrician, she told jurors, delivering multiple one-liners in her first day on the stand.
According to Almánzar, Ellis appeared to announce her arrival to someone she was speaking with on her phone. Ellis then followed her down a hall and started recording her, she testified. “I asked her, ‘Yo, why are you recording me?’” Almánzar testified. “I’m like, ‘Why are you recording me? Aren’t you security?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, my bad.’ But then I’m walking, and I feel her still following me. So as I’m speed walking trying to look for the office, I turn around again, and I’m like, ‘Why are you following me?’”
According to Almánzar, Ellis replied, “Because I can.” To this, Almánzar says she replied, “No, you can’t.” Again, Almánzar rebuked Ellis for allegedly recording and following her.
“She’s getting closer and closer. Now she’s like in front of me, where I can’t really maneuver,” Almánzar testified. “I’m like, ‘Ain’t you supposed to be security? … You’re recording me. Now you’re following me. Like, back up!’ She’s like, ‘I can do what I want.’”
The Grammy winner said she accused Ellis of “invading” her privacy. “Now, we’re like chest to chest,” she said. “I’m thinking to myself, this girl is big. She’s got big black boots on. I’m like, damn, what the hell am I going to do now? She’s literally right in my face, like, on my chest, and we’re arguing, I’m telling her to back up. And she’s not backing up.”
Almánzar admitted the argument devolved into a shouting match with obscenities. “Bitch, get the fuck out of my face,” she recalled saying. “We’re literally screaming at each other,” she testified. She claimed Ellis was still “wilding out” when the medical office receptionist and the obstetrician rushed out to break up the argument. She accused Ellis of demanding $24 million for her alleged injuries that day.
Almánzar’s defense was bolstered by key testimony from the receptionist and doctor. Both described Ellis as the apparent aggressor. Dr. David Finke said he rushed out into the hallway that day to investigate the disturbance and watched as Ellis allegedly “smacked” the receptionist, Tierra Malcolm. He said Ellis was out of control and “flailing” her arms during what he described as an “epic yelling match.”
“There was a lot of yelling, a lot of finger-pointing,” he said. “My receptionist was struck, not hard, but on her shoulder.” The doctor said he clearly saw a phone in Ellis’ hand as he tried to de-escalate the situation. He recalled repeatedly telling Ellis in a loud voice that “this was not OK,” and that she had “to stop and to do [her] job.” Finke said he was a foot away from Ellis, staring her in the face, as he wrangled her into the elevator to leave the fifth floor. He did not notice any injuries on her cheek, he said.
In her separate testimony, Malcolm said it appeared Ellis had Almánzar “kind of cornered” in the hallway. She said the women were “cursing,” but she never heard Almánzar use any racial slurs.
“I saw them in the corner, Cardi B’s back to the wall, and I just heard a lot of arguing,” Malcolm testified. “I immediately walked over there and got in between them.”
Malcolm said she stood facing Ellis, with Almánzar behind her. After the incident, she noticed a scratch on her forehead that was bleeding slightly. She wasn’t exactly sure how she got the scratch, but she recalled seeing Ellis’ “hands trying to reach over me.”
“I could only see arms flying in front of me,” she said. “I didn’t feel anything or see any hands come from behind me.” Asked if she heard Ellis yell, “I will fuck your shit up,” she said, “Yeah, something along those words.”
Malcolm said 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.
Almánzar, who’s set to release her second studio album, Am I the Drama?, on Sept. 19, previously prevailed in multiple other civil trials. She scored a $4 million jury verdict against gossip blogger Latasha Kebe, professionally known as Tasha K. A New York judge later sided with Almánzar and dismissed a libel lawsuit that named her as a defendant alongside her sister, Hennessy. Almánzar also won at a California-based federal trial where she was accused of using a portion of a man’s back tattoo on the cover of her early mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1.
From Rolling Stone US
