A Los Angeles judge has ordered legal punishment for a lawyer who repped security guard Emani Ellis in her assault lawsuit against Cardi B, ruling that the attorney intentionally violated court orders by asking the superstar if she had any gang ties.
In a ruling Wednesday (Jan. 28), Judge Ian Fusselman says Ron Rosen Janfaza must pay a $1,500 fine and self-report to the bar association over the incident, in which he asked Cardi on the witness stand if she had “any affiliation at this time with a gang,” despite a ruling that such questions were out of bounds.
Janfaza argued he was “simply asking questions” as he tried to “zealously advocate” for his client — or, alternately, that he was a novice litigator who had merely forgotten about the earlier order — but the judge says he is “not persuaded by any of these arguments.”
“It was no accident. It was not the result of inexperience or stress,” Judge Fusselman wrote in Wednesday’s ruling, obtained by Billboard. “It was a knowing and intentional violation of the court’s ruling.”
Ellis sued Cardi in 2020, claiming the star had assaulted her when she worked as a security guard at a Beverly Hills gynecologist’s office in 2018, when Cardi was four months pregnant with her first child. But after a September trial, it took jurors less than an hour of deliberations to reject the accusations and clear the star of all wrongdoing.
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Ahead of the trial, the judge banned Ellis or her lawyers from making any reference to prior “bad acts” by Cardi, including her well-documented days as a stripper or her self-professed involvement with the Bloods during her youth in the South Bronx.
“Defendant’s … prior involvement in exotic dancing or gang associations have no apparent probative value and any references thereto would be unduly prejudicial and likely to confuse the jury,” the judge had written in the ruling.
But at the very start of his questioning of the star, Janfaza did exactly that, asking her: “Do you have any affiliation at this time with a gang?” Her lawyers immediately objected, and the judge warned Janfaza about any further mention of the subject.
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In the wake of the verdict, Cardi’s team asked the judge to issue sanctions, or judicial punishment, over the gang question. Janfaza responded by offering a litany of excuses, ranging from procedural error — that his office manager had inserted the question into an outline — to the self-effacing.
“He is not an experienced litigator, had very little sleep and the violations were mistakes and not willful,” the judge wrote, summarizing one of the attorney’s arguments, before recounting another: “In previous trials, he had made significantly more egregious arguments without facing sanctions.”
But in his Wednesday ruling, Judge Fusselman rejects all those explanations, calling them “inconsistent and contradictory.” He says Janfaza instead simply made a “knowing and intentional violation” of a clear court order: “It is clear that Mr. Janfaza was aware of the [earlier ruling] and that the question was specifically drafted in an attempt to avoid directly violating the letter, but not the clear intent, of the court’s ruling.” Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Wednesday’s ruling is a win for Cardi, but it could have been much worse for Janfaza. The judge refused to issue harsher punitive sanctions and also declined to order him to repay Cardi’s legal bills — fines that could have been many times higher than $1,500.
