An author who won a copyright infringement case against the embattled Harlem native has accused former Roc-A-Fella Records owner Damon Dash of infringement.
According to The New York Post, Dash has yet to fulfill his financial obligation to Edwyna Brooks, who won her case against him in 2020. In a recent lawsuit, she accuses Dash of hiding his money to avoid paying her what she is owed from a previous lawsuit.
Brooks won a $300,000 copyright infringement case
against Dash in 2020. In the original copyright lawsuit, Brooks said that Dash marketed and sold a film project based on one of her characters, a female crime boss from a book series she wrote, “Mafietta.” He then countersued but eventually lost that case as well. After last month’s auction did not provide enough capital for her to be compensated, she filed a new lawsuit against him in Manhattan federal court.Dash and his girlfriend, Rachel Horn, “[comingled] and
[used] their companies as one entity and attempt to use the entities in an elaborate liability shifting scheme to avoid judgment debtors on behalf of themselves and their entities,” the lawsuit states.Her attorney, Chris Brown, claims Dash owes Brooks nearly $100,000 in interest.
The recent lawsuit alleges that Dash and his company, Poppington LLC, tried to hide his assets by moving them to a company not named in the suit.
“Mr. Dash has about $10 million in personal debt,” Brown told the media outlet. “If we would have been made whole from the auction, this lawsuit would not be necessary.”
“Poppington began fraudulently conveying Poppington assets” to a new entity, The Dash Group, “to avoid Brooks’ judgment.”
The lawsuit alleges that Dash has the money, but by placing the assets into TDG, he is skirting Poppington’s responsibility to pay the judgment.
“There is no doubt that Poppington and TDG are related entities and engaged in a defacto merger,” the suit states. “The assets of Poppington were fraudulently conveyed to TDG in order to hide them from Brooks and future judgment creditors.”
In November, the State of New York won an auction of Dash’s share in Roc-A-Fella Records. For $1 million, the state purchased the stake to recover some of the $8.7 million Dash owes to his debtors. However, due to the low amount, which was once expected to fetch $10 million, Dash is still heavily in debt.