A jury gave Cardi B a quick and absolute victory Tuesday at a trial in the lawsuit of a security guard who alleged the rap star assaulted her at a doctor’s office during her first pregnancy.
The jury at a small courthouse in Alhambra, California, deliberated for only about an hour before finding Cardi not liable in the lawsuit brought by Emani Ellis, who alleged Cardi cut her face with a fingernail and spat on her in the hallway of a Beverly Hills obstetrician in February 2018.
Cardi said her pregnancy was a secret to most of the world at the time, and she feared that Ellis was going to make it public. She acknowledged that the two argued, but said it never got physical.
Her testimony over two days last week was streamed live and widely viewed. After several days off, the trial resumed with closing arguments on Tuesday, and the jury got the case in mid-afternoon.
PG/Bauer-Griffin
Cardi said she had been visiting Los Angeles doing promotional work in February 2018 around that year’s NBA All-Star Game. She was four months into her pregnancy with the first of her three children with rapper Offset. She said, at the time, she had told her inner circle she was having a baby, but not the public or her parents.
The obstetrician’s office had been closed to other patients on a Saturday for her privacy.
She said Ellis, a security guard for the building, followed her to her fifth-floor appointment. Cardi told jurors last week that she heard Ellis say her name into a phone and appeared to be filming her.
“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?'” Cardi testified, “and she said, ‘Oh my bad.’ She practically apologized.”
But the argument grew increasingly heated, she said.
“As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi said.
Ellis testified that the incident left her humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required cosmetic surgery. Ellis, who lost her job over the incident, sought damages that include medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with punitive damages. She does not specify a total amount in the lawsuit, but Cardi said from the stand that she is “suing me for $24 million.”
A receptionist who broke up the argument between Cardi and Ellis largely backed the rapper’s account in testimony.
