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Nelly has reportedly asked a judge to reprimand the lawyers who sued him over his debut album Country Grammar due to how "frivolous" the lawsuit was.
According to a report Billboard published on Thursday, January 16, the St. Louis native's legal team filed a new motion arguing that the years-old allegations from former St. Lunatics member Ali are so "baseless" that the case "never should've been brought in the first place." Nelly, born Cornell Haynes, believes that Ali and his attorneys should be punished for taking legal action against him, especially after other members of the Lunatics dropped out of the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff and his counsel’s failure to withdraw their fatally flawed claims, and their insistence on pressing forward with frivolous assertions and legal arguments require a substantial sanction,” Nelly’s lawyer Ken Freundlich wrote. “[This is] not only to compensate Haynes for the substantial legal fees and expenses he has been forced to incur in defending this action, but also to deter plaintiff and others who would flout the Copyright Act’s rules and clear undisputed court precedent.”
Attorneys Gail M. Walton and Precious Felder Gates filed the lawsuit on behalf of Ali Jones last year. Jones' lawyers alleged Nelly "manipulated" Jones and the other members including Lavell Webb (City Spud), Robert Kyjuan (Kyjuan) and Tohri Harper (Murphy Lee) into believing that he would give them writing credits and pay them for their work on his debut album Country Grammar in 2000. The lawsuit claimed Nelly lied and never paid them. Jones sued for copyright infringement, but as Freundlich notes, the statute of limitations for such a claim expired years ago.
The lawsuit originally listed other members of the St. Louis-based rap group like Murphy Lee, Kyjuan and City Spud. However, they quickly demanded to be removed from the suit and later reunited with Nelly onstage at the 2024 American Music Awards. The group's other member Corey Edwards a.k.a. "Slo Down" was never involved. Walton and Gates responded to Nelly's recent motion and said they would continue to fight for Jones' "undeniable right to be properly compensated.”
“It is both unethical and unlawful for artists and their corporate partners to exploit the creative work of writers, deceiving them out of their rightful credits and fair compensation," both lawyers told Billboard.