The presiding judge has scheduled an initial conference in Lydia Harris’ $107 million Death Row lawsuit against Snoop Dogg and several others. Photo Credit: Death Row
Lydia Harris is officially proceeding with her more than $100 million lawsuit against Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight, Jimmy lovine, Lucian Grainge, and others.
The presiding judge just recently put the case’s scheduling wheels in motion, after Lydia Harris (who was previously married to Death Row co-founder Michael Harris) submitted the pro se action last week.
We promptly broke down the lawsuit, the core claims of which are straightforward enough but involve all manner of decades-old details.
Turning the clock back to the 20th century for a moment, Lydia is said to have helped establish, bankroll, and run Death Row alongside her now-ex-husband, who was incarcerated at the time of the label’s founding.
Among other things, these contributions purportedly saw the two assume a material interest in the company. Fast forward to 2002, when Lydia sued Suge Knight for allegedly pushing her out of Death Row, which had, of course, exploded in popularity since its founding.
The case never went to trial, but per a 20-year-old account from CBS News, the court in 2005 ordered Knight to cough up $107 million. Knight, who’s currently incarcerated, subsequently declared bankruptcy.
Despite this bankruptcy process, Lydia in a recent interview with Bomb1st appeared to acknowledge accepting a $1 million “good-faith payment” (the interviewer’s quote, not hers) from Suge Knight in or around 2005.
In any event, $107 million is also the sizable sum Lydia is seeking from the aforementioned defendants, who per the complaint allegedly “engaged in a deliberate and coordinated scheme to obstruct justice, conceal assets, and evade liability.”
(Of course, Snoop Dogg acquired and relaunched Death Row in 2022; that same year, we provided an in-depth look at the label’s multifaceted history, including its rise, various owners, and eventual bankruptcy.)
Additionally, the private-chef plaintiff’s suit not-so-subtly points to “strategic bankruptcy filings” designed “to prevent enforcement of the [2005] judgment and shield assets from collection.”
While it remains to be seen whether Lydia will prevail in court – more on this in a moment – an initial pretrial (video) conference is now confirmed for summer.
As currently scheduled, said conference will take place on the morning of June 27th. However, Lydia in the above-highlighted interview explained in different words that if all goes according to plan, a resolution will materialize at some point before trial.
“Yeah,” she responded when asked whether her “ultimate goal is just to get them to settle” the suit.
