B.I.G. Settlement Rejected
Call it a B.I.G. fat no.
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted to reject an $18 million settlement offer in the federal wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of the late Notorious B.I.G.
Relatives of the slain rapper presented their demands to give officials a chance to bring an to end the high-profile legal action, which accuses the city and the Los Angeles Police Department of bungling the investigation into the 1997 murder of the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace.
"We're giving the city the chance to stand up and do the right thing and not be painted with the really ugly brush that people in the LAPD could be painted with," attorney Perry Sanders, who's representing the Wallace family, told Reuters.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared a mistrial in the case after embarrassing revelations surfaced that city attorneys and the LAPD failed to provide key documents that linked two crooked cops now behind bars to the crime.
Biggie was gunned down on Mar. 9, 1997 after attending a music industry party in the city's mid-Wilshire district.
As the police investigation went nowhere, the hip-hopster's mom, Voletta Wallace, and widow, R&B star Faith Evans, sued to expose what they believed was police complicity in covering up the involvement of former officers David Mack and Rafael Perez.
The family's original suit alleged Mack arranged for his old college roommate to kill Wallace--the top star of Sean "Diddy" Combs' New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment--at the behest of Death Row Records kingpin Marion "Suge" Knight in retaliation for the drive-by shooting of Death Row's biggest star, Tupac Shakur, in Las Vegas six months earlier.
The family also claimed that Biggie's civil rights were violated because the LAPD purportedly knew about threats against him and failed to adequately protect him when he came to town for the party.
However, as they voted to rebuff the family's settlement offer, city officials said there wasn't enough evidence to prove the allegations.
"To my knowledge there's been no connection established with the police department," Councilman Dennis Zine told Reuters. "Why would we pay if we're not culpable of anything? They're trying to hold taxpayers responsible, and based on the media reports I've seen there has been no link [to Mack and Perez]."
Now the case will play out in court. The family vows to press ahead with a new lawsuit that will expand the scope to include details from recently unearthed evidence.
In declaring the mistrial, a furious Cooper blasted a detective for concealing files about the rogue cops from the court and, as a result, sanctioned the city and the police department, ordering them to reimburse the Wallace family all attorney fees and costs.
Sanders has filed a motion asking for a hefty $2.1 million from the city, an amount Los Angeles attorneys have described as "excessive."
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