Diddy loses appeal for a new trial over Biggie sample
Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' appeal to overturn a court ruling ordering him to pay over $500,000 for sampling an Ohio Players song on Biggie's debut album, Ready To Die,was recently denied.
As reported earlier, Bridgeport Music and it’s sister company Westbound Records, filed a lawsuit in Nashville federal court in 2005 accusing Diddy and Bad Boy Records for using “Singing In The Morning” by the Ohio Players without permission on the song “Ready To Die” by the late Notorious B.I.G.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the case went to trial and in April 2006, a Nashville jury ‘awarded $733,878 in damages to Bridgeport and punitive damages to Westbound of $3.5 million'.
A trial judge would modify the verdict, ruling that ‘Bridgeport should receive $150,000 in statutory damages and Westbound should receive $366,939 in actual damages'.
Diddy and Bad Boy would appeal the judgment saying the jury’s verdict was a result of ‘passion and prejudice’ brought on by the plaintiffs lawyers' who in their closing argument said: “This is a joke. They think they can come down here to Nashville, Tennessee, and pull a fast one on the six of you.”
The court reportedly denied Diddy's request for a new trial in late October ruling that there was no objection made by the Bad Boy mogul's counsel when the ‘purportedly improper statements' were made.
The court stated that they ‘require a heightened degree of prejudice in order to grant a new trial'
Diddy is currently facing another laws uit revolving around Biggie. Last month, James Sabatino, a former Bad Boy consultant, hit Diddy with a $19 million lawsuit over audio and video footage he took of the slain rapper in 1994.
Sabatino claims Diddy agreed to buy the Biggie recordings from him for $200,000 in 1997 but has only paid $25,000 to date.
Notorious B.I.G., whose real name is Christopher Wallace, was shot and killed in Los Angeles after an industry party in 1997. His murder still remains unsolved.
