Nicki Minaj’s old legal team says she hasn’t just skipped paying her bill. According to new court filings, she hasn’t responded to their lawsuit at all.
Lawyers from Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani filed a request for a default judgment on Tuesday, November 3, asking the court to award them $295,605. A hearing on the request is set for November 16, The Wrap reported.
The firm first sued Minaj back in March to recover the money. In the latest documents, it says the complaint “has not been responded to in any way” by the rapper, and since more than 30 days have passed since she was served, it wants the court to step in.
The bill traces back to 2024, when the California firm represented Minaj in a copyright infringement case over her 2021 track “I Lied.”
That suit claimed the song copied the beat and instrumentation of “onmysleeve,” a 2011 song by Julius Johnson.
Per a declaration cited by The Wrap, the firm billed Minaj and her company, Harajuku Barbie Music LLC, $229,541.75.
That amount was still unpaid when the complaint was filed in March, and the firm says it has since racked up more than $25,249.51 in late fees.
The timing of the filing has drawn attention because Minaj has spent the past few weeks deep in political headlines.
A longtime Trump supporter, she appeared with a Republican candidate endorsed by Trump in New Hampshire on election day and flew with the president to a rally aboard Air Force One.
During that trip she took part in a mock interview for the White House press secretary role, which Trump had already handed to Katie Zacharia after Karoline Leavitt’s departure.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung shared a clip on X with the caption, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have found the new White House Press Secretary!”
She also went after New York Governor Kathy Hochul, calling her an “evil woman” in a string of social media posts before the state’s governor’s race. Hochul went on to win against Republican challenger Bruce A. Blakeman.
To her supporters, the political appearances and the legal fight are separate stories that just happen to overlap.
To critics, the image of Minaj campaigning on a national stage while a six figure legal bill goes unanswered is hard to ignore.
This also isn’t the first time a default judgment has come knocking. In January, Minaj avoided a forced auction of her $20 million Hidden Hills mansion by paying a $503,318 default judgment in full, settling it just before the sale could go ahead.
That earlier case ended with a last minute payment, and nobody knows yet if this one will follow the same script. Minaj hasn’t publicly addressed the new filing, and all eyes are now on what happens in court on November 16.
