ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) — Cardi B testified Wednesday that she did not contact a safety guard who alleges the rapper lower her face with a fingernail and spat on her in an altercation outdoors an obstetrician’s workplace throughout the hip-hop star’s not-yet-public first being pregnant.
“She couldn’t get a scratch from me because I didn’t touch her,” Cardi stated on the stand in her second day of testimony in a Los Angeles County court docket.
Ron Rosen Janfaza, lawyer for the plaintiff, Emani Ellis, requested her if she had been offended.
“Yes I was angry!” As a result of I’m pregnant!” Cardi replied. “And this girl’s about to beat my ass!”
She acknowledged that the argument bought very heated — repeating in court docket a lot of the swearing the 2 did — and that they have been chest-to-chest at one level, however stated the struggle by no means turned bodily.
“She didn’t touch me,” Cardi said. “She was going to touch me, but she didn’t get to touch me.”
Cardi stated she had been visiting Los Angeles doing promotional work in February 2018 round that 12 months’s NBA All-Star Recreation. She was 4 months into her being pregnant with the primary of her three kids with rapper Offset. She had instructed her internal circle she was having a child, however not the general public or her mother and father.
The obstetrician’s workplace had been closed to different sufferers on a Saturday for her privateness.
She stated Ellis, a safety guard for the constructing, adopted her to her fifth-floor appointment. Cardi stated she heard Ellis say her title right into a cellphone and seemed to be filming her. Cardi feared Ellis would out the truth that she was pregnant.
“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?’” Cardi testified, “and she said, ’Oh my bad.’ She practically apologized.’”
However the argument grew more and more heated, she stated.
“As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi stated.
Each girls are 32 years outdated and about the identical top, however Cardi stated Ellis was greater than her.
“She is like, security-heavy,” Cardi said. “She just looks a little, like she could protect the building.”
Beneath friendlier questioning from one in every of her personal attorneys, Cardi defined why she was conserving her being pregnant secret on the time, seven months after the discharge of her first main label single and main hit, “Bodak Yellow,” when she was still in her “freshman year” of stardom.
“I was getting used to things,” she stated. “I was just so worried about what everybody was saying and thinking. I thought I was letting a lot of people down.”
However she stated, past that, she treasures her privateness on all medical issues, “especially something so sacred as a pregnancy. It’s yours.”
A big chunk of the testimony was spent on the acrylic nails with rhinestones Cardi had that week, and whether or not they may do the harm that’s alleged.
“It wasn’t a shape that was harming, it was coffin-shaped,” she stated. “They weren’t sharp.”
Ellis testified earlier within the trial that the incident left her humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required beauty surgical procedure. Ellis, who misplaced her job over the incident, is looking for damages that embody medical bills, compensation for emotional and bodily struggling, and misplaced wages, together with punitive damages. She doesn’t specify a complete quantity within the lawsuit however Cardi stated from the stand that she is “suing me for $24 million.”
Tierra Malcolm, the receptionist from the physician’s workplace who bought between the 2 girls and broke up the argument, gave testimony Wednesday that largely supported Cardi’s account.
She stated she got here into the hallway after listening to a ruckus outdoors however noticed no bodily combating. She later seen a scratch on her personal face that she assumed got here from Ellis, as a result of she had been going through her together with her again to Cardi.
Requested to characterize the argument, Malcolm stated she wasn’t positive if she may swear in court docket.
“We’ve heard just about everything so far, so it’s OK,” Decide Ian C. Fusselman stated to laughs from a lot of the courtroom.
The testimony got here at a small courthouse outdoors Los Angeles in Alhambra, the place trials involving celebrities are very uncommon. The trial is taking the remainder of the week off and is anticipated to renew, and conclude, subsequent week.
