Ja Rule has been officially dismissed from a $100 million civil lawsuit surrounding his involvement in Fyre Festival. Attendees filed a class-action lawsuit against the Queens rapper, Fyre Festival Founder Billy McFarland and several other executives involved in the infamously botched event.
Back in May of 2017, prosecuting attorney Mark Geragos filed a class action lawsuit against McFarland, Ja Rule and Fyre Fest’s Chief Marketing Officer Grant Margolin. This past July, a federal judge dismissed Ja and Margolin from the suit, ruling that there was insufficient evidence that proved Ja Rule and Margolin were guilty of fraud or had deliberately deceived the public about the festival.
However, on Oct. 10, prosecutors filed their amended complaint with new evidence that they claimed proved Ja Rule and Margolin had acted on behalf of the scam. They argued that Ja Rule had promoted the festival through social media just 24 hours before the event was scheduled to begin, despite already cancelling the musical acts and subsequently canning the event altogether.
Now, All Hip Hop reports that Judge Kevin Castel has sided with the “Always On Time” rapper, ruling that he is not guilty of fraud and further blocking any future attempts to drag Ja back into the legal battle.
“This Court rejected plaintiffs’ conclusory assertions that they relied on defendants’ representations about the Festival as insufficient to state a claim for fraud,” the judge stated in his ruling. “In the case of Atkins [Ja Rule], plaintiffs alleged an actionable false statement, but failed to allege that they acted in reliance thereon.”
“This ruling is nothing short of a total vindication of Mr. Atkins,” Ja Rule’s lawyer, Ryan Hayden Smith, said in a statement released to All Hip Hop.
Fyre Festival ticket holders paid between $1,000 and $100,000 to attend The Bahamas event, which was supposed to take place on April 28, 2017.
This year, two documentaries were produced about the scandalized festival, one by Netflix and the other by Hulu. McFarland is currently serving a six-year sentence in federal prison, after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud last year.