(NEW YORK) - A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has issued a reprieve against an Arkansas judge's award of $16.6 million to a woman partially paralyzed after being shot at a Tupac Shakur concert. |
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the unnamed Los Angeles judge ruled the previous verdict unenforceable, claiming that the Arkansas trial should have been stopped until the defendant (Shakur's estate) could bring in someone to defend its claim.
The original lawsuit was filed by Jacquelyn McNealey before Shakur was slain in September 1996; the case came to trial after the rapper's death. McNealey, 27, was awarded $16.6 million in November after suing Shakur. She was paralyzed from the chest down after being shot in the back at a 1993 concert in Pine Bluff, Ark. The gunman is in prison. Shakur "was taunting the crowd; he created a riotlike atmosphere which ended up in a shooting," McNealey's attorney David Mitchell said during the original suit.
McNealey settled with the nightclub for $500,000, according to Mitchell, but claims are pending against Death Row Records; its former distributor, Interscope Records; and Time Warner.
