By Mike Winslow
(AllHipHop News) Hip-Hop executive James Rosemond is going on the offensive with a plan to file a $120 million dollar lawsuit against The New York Daily News and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Chuck Phillips, over an article published in September in the popular newspaper.
The news article, which was published on the 14th anniversary of the death of Tupac Shakur, accused Rosemond aka "Jimmy Henchmen" of cooperating with the government for years.
Phillips, a former writer for the Los Angeles Times, is a well-respected investigative journalist who has been reporting on the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. for over a decade.
"It never fails, every year around Tupac's death that Chuck Phillips raises his fabricated mouth against Jimmy Rosemond but we intend to silence his foul mouth with this lawsuit and bury these tampered minutes and paperwork that Chuck Phillip received from jealous and envious inmates, which is the basis of this fairy tale story the Daily News wrote," Rosemond's lawyer David Feinstein snapped.
In an article published by The Los Angeles Times on March 17th, 2008, Phillips claimed that Rosemond set up Tupac Shakur to be beaten, robbed and subsequently shot at the Quad Studios in New York in November of 1994, resulting in tension between rap groups on the East and West Coasts of the United States.
The information was based off of civil court documents filed by an inmate named David Sabatino, who claimed that he worked with Rosemond early in his career promoting rap conventions.
TheSmokingGun.com later revealed that the documents were based on forged by Sabatino, who according to Rosemond's lawyers, has been declared insane by doctors.
The Los Angeles Times was forced to retract the story, in addition to offering an apology to Rosemond and Combs.
Additionally, the Los Angeles Times settled a lawsuit initiated by Rosemond over the story.
Recently, a letter Chuck Phillips allegedly sent to an inmate attempting to get him to reveal information on Rosemond, while making disparaging comments about the executive, was circulated on the Internet.
"On more than one occasion both Daily News & Chuck Phillips have contacted the same inmate trying to coerce him into saying Jimmy was an informant," Rosemond's lawyer Feinstein continued. "We have affidavits from inmates to prove the efforts of their coercion and how determined they were in proving their point. Even after the article's release Chuck Phillips continued in his quest to change the mind of individuals who refused to lie against Jimmy Rosemond at grand jury proceedings.
"Jimmy Rosemond has paid his dues to society and since his release from jail, a decade ago, he's been active in his community, working with troubled youths and have worked extensively abroad in Haiti," Feinstein said. "The only thing Jimmy Rosemond is guilty of is being an accomplished manager for singers & rappers and now he's a victim of his own success."
allhiphop.com
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