Young Thug‘s lawyer has repudiated suggestions from the management firm behind the rapper’s luxury Georgia apartment complex that he may have played a part in a 2020 theft.
The rapper, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, filed a lawsuit recently against a luxury apartment building in Atlanta called The Trace, alleging that its concierge was responsible for the loss of a bag containing over $1.1million (£800,000) worth of valuables.
According to legal documents shared by Digital Music News, the alleged incident took place on November 1, 2020 when Thug accidentally left a Louis Vuitton bag (itself worth around $2,500, or £1,820) next to his Lamborghini. A resident reported it to The Trace’s concierge, leaving it in the care of an employee.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Georgia, alleges that the employee had placed the bag in “a secure/locked location” with a note instructing other employees not to release it without her permission, assuring Thug that he’d be able to retrieve it from the concierge. Another employee, however, allegedly passed the bag over to an unnamed individual with no relationship to Thug.
In addition to $40,000 (£29,000) in cash, the bag’s contents reportedly included a diamond-encrusted watch valued around $57,000 (£41,500), a diamond chain valued around $37,000 (£27,000) and a hard drive containing approximately 200 unreleased songs, which Thug claimed is worth at least $1million (£728,000).
The Trace’s parent company, JLB Peachtree Management, responded in a new court filing that Young Thug’s own “negligence and failure to exercise ordinary care” may be a factor in the incident, denying the company assumed a duty to protect the property and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
However, Thug’s lawyer, Charles Hoffecker, has suggested that the claim is missing vital information. “The suggestion my client’s negligence – if any – outweighs the defendants’ ignores the simple facts the defendants’ employees acted to secure the property, knew whose property it was, committed to keep the property safe in a secure location, communicated to my client they would keep the property secure, and then released the property to an unknown person,” Hoffecker told Rolling Stone.
“Now that the defendants have filed their answer, we look forward to pursuing Young Thug’s rights through the litigation process,” he added.
Thug is suing for damages, citing negligence and failure to train its employees. As his representative wrote in their filing, the concierge employees “undertook a duty to safeguard and return [Thug’s] property” when they agreed to hold the bag. The filing also claims that The Trace’s staff have been “unreasonable and stubbornly litigious”.
News of the theft arrived just days after the release of Thug’s latest album ‘Punk’. Featuring lead single ‘Tick Tock’, the record landed last Friday (October 15) via YSL/300/Atlantic.
In a five-star review, NME writer Kyann-Sian Williams said: “‘Punk’ was long-awaited, and, boy, did Young Thug live up to its hype. It’s so different from the rest of the music he has been putting out, and Young Thug shows that he can make hits can transcend the rap world.
“Many say Young Thug is one of the greatest musicians of the current generation, and with ‘Punk’, he’s proved that to be true.”
The post Young Thug’s lawyer fires back against “negligence” claims in $1million lawsuit appeared first on NME.