Crime

Autograph Seeker Successfully Gets Ass Kicked, Sues Cardi B's Entourage

These expensive, these is red bottoms. These is bloody shoes.

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Cardi B at the Met Gala (ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images)

I’m torn. On the one hand, I really think that people who try to provoke fights with celebrities just so they can get a payday from getting their ass kicked are scum. They are the slip-and-fall artists of the modern era.

On the other hand, Cardi B really seems like an obnoxious person. The very few friends I have in the music and entertainment industry tell me that it’s not just her “act.” She really is the kind of boorish person she holds herself out to be.

I guess the way to reconcile these feelings is to both be glad that the guy who provoked the fight well and truly got his ass beat, and to be happy that Cardi B is going to have to give him a payday.

The fight in question happened after the Met gala. Some jerkface was harassing Cardi B and her fiance Offset over an autograph. At one point, as Cardi B’s people started menacing him, he openly begged them to hit him, warning, “I’ll take all your money, bro.”

TMZ has the video of what ensued.

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Cardi B is pregnant and you are just a low person if you are going to harass a pregnant woman for a stupid autograph. You can’t expect her, or the people who love her, to be at all chill about your attempts to harass her.

On the other hand, everybody made it to the car. Once you’re in your car, you don’t really need to get back out to beat up a guy who is actively saying: if you beat me up I will take all your money. Like, I’m sure that’s what you’d do if you were in a Cardi B video, but in real life, you should just drive away.

True to his word, the autograph seeker, Giovanni Arnold, filed a 22-page complaint yesterday. It’s a tight complaint. Almost like, I dunno, Arnold PLANNED IT OUT OR SOMETHING. From Courthouse News:

Arnold, who says he suffered a “fractured face” from the incident, is a career fan of all kinds of stars, according to his website, and runs a reality video web series about celebrities. The site lists a Cardi B poster for $100 that it says the rapper signed.

“Mark Hotel security watched idly as the melee unfolded, as the beatdown occurred, and then as Plaintiff’s attackers fled from the scene,” the complaint says.

Accusing both artists of inciting violence at their appearances, it says “the road to the two entertainers’ overnight success” is “paved with carnage.”

“The assault comes on the heels of several other violent incidents precipitated by Cardi B and Offset, all of which should have indicated to QCM [Quality Control Management] that their security team’s propensity for violence made them more of a threat to the public than vice versa,” the complaint continues.

I don’t know if Arnold wins in front of a jury. Harassing a pregnant woman, asking to get beat up, before you get beaten up, might not play well in front of a Bronx jury.

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But I don’t know that it needs to get to that far. Cardi B and her team could just pay this man his money. The price for administering this beatdown was probably worth it anyway.

Autograph Seeker Sues Cardi B for Assault [Courthouse News Service]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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