Not So Fast: Plaintiff In Nicki Minaj Harassment Case Refiles Lawsuit In California

It turns out that the woman accusing Nicki Minaj‘s husband of sexual assault and harassment did not change her mind about holding the rapper accountable for her role in the ongoing case.

While Minaj was dismissed from Jennifer Hough‘s lawsuit in New York last week, Hough’s attorney told a federal magistrate judge on Thursday that the move was just a matter of jurisdiction, Rolling Stone reports. Attorney Seven N. Gordon told Judge James R. Cho that they intend to refile the lawsuit in California, where Minaj and her husband Kennety Petty now live.

“We still feel very strongly about the merits of the case against both of them,” Gordon said in a statement after the hearing.

Asked if Hough would also be moving her complaints against Petty, Gordon indicated that they would consider consolidating the harassment claims if the New York case goes to trial. They filed a request for a default judgement, which would allow the judge to make a decision in the case without hearing full arguments from either side.

Petty was convicted in 1995 of having assaulted Hough at knife point in 1994. Hough’s original lawsuit, filed in August, alleges that the couple began harassing the plaintiff and her family after Petty was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender in California after they relocated from the East Coast.

Following Minaj’s dismissal from the New York case, her attorney Judd Burnstein sent her accuser’s legal team an email indicating their intent to file their own suit.

“You forced my client to spend over $300,000 in fees to defend a case which even my Labradoodle, Gracie, could see was frivolous on both the facts and the law,” he wrote, according to Billboard.

Upon learning of Hough’s intent to refile the suit, Burnstein once again downplayed the suit as frivolous.

“This is just a frivolous gambit to avoid a sanctions motion which I told them that I would be filing shortly and for which they refuse to set a schedule,” he said in a statement. “As usual, they have decided to adopt a tactic without bothering to research the law. Had they done so, they would realize that re-filing their frivolous action in another jurisdiction will only result in another court sanctioning them.”

Petty’s attorney Steven David Isser also told the Judge Cho that he believes the case is without merit, thus explaining Hough’s efforts to avoid a trial altogether.