Snoop Dogg’s legal team wants out of the Drakeo the Ruler wrongful death lawsuit, and their argument basically comes down to this: he was just the headliner, not the boss.
New court filings dropped Tuesday show Snoop’s company, SDLLC, is pushing for summary judgment , meaning they want a judge to kill the claims against them before this thing ever sees a trial. Drakeo the Ruler, born Darrell Caldwell, was fatally stabbed backstage at the Once Upon a Time in LA festival in December 2021 after being attacked by a large group. His mother, brother, and son have since filed multiple negligence suits against the various companies involved, including Live Nation, C3 Presents, and yes, Snoop’s LLC.
The core of Snoop’s argument is pretty clean: SDLLC had no management role, no oversight of security personnel, and , this is the detail that’ll matter , his only written contract with the festival was a $500,000 deal to perform a one-hour set. His lawyers are leaning hard on that, saying a performance contract doesn’t make you responsible for what happens on the premises. There’s even footage they’re pointing to as evidence that nobody from SDLLC was anywhere near that backstage area when the attack happened.
Snoop himself, real name Calvin Broadus Jr., signed a declaration to the court saying his company simply wasn’t running anything that night.
That said, this isn’t over. Drakeo’s family’s legal team hasn’t responded yet , they’ll almost certainly file a counter-argument in the coming months. And if the claims survive summary judgment, everything rolls into a September trial covering all the wrongful death allegations together. Live Nation is still in it, still denying wrongdoing, still calling the killing “unforeseeable,” which is the kind of corporate non-answer that says everything.
The stadium operator already got bounced from the case earlier this month, so the defendant list is shrinking , but the trial itself, if it happens, is going to be a reckoning for how the live music industry handles security when the cameras are rolling and the real danger is offstage.
Drakeo deserved better than a backstage that nobody was watching.
Source: Original Article
