After jurors took just an hour to side with Cardi B over a security guard’s assault claims — and after a judge shot down the guard’s request for a new trial — that same judge has now slapped the guard’s lawyer with a $1,500 fine for asking Cardi about possible “gang affiliation” while she was on the stand last August.
In a six-page decision issued Wednesday, Los Angeles County Judge Ian C. Fusselman found that plaintiff’s lawyer Ron A. Rosen Janfaza blatantly violated a court order when one of his first questions posed to Cardi during her Aug. 26 trial testimony was whether she was affiliated with a gang. A month before the trial started, Judge Fusselman specifically blocked any mention of so-called prior bad acts, including exotic dancing and alleged “former association with a gang or gang members during her youth.”
In his pre-trial ruling last July, the judge said such questions were irrelevant to ex-security guard Emani Ellis’ claims that Cardi had scratched her cheek with an acrylic fingernail during an altercation outside a Beverly Hills doctor’s office in 2018. In his July 2025 ruling, the judge said the topics “would be unduly prejudicial and likely to confuse the jury and result in an undue waste of time.”
Shortly after Cardi, born Belcalis Almánzar, stepped up to the witness stand, Janfaza asked, “Do you have any affiliation at this time with a gang?” Lawyers for Almánzar immediately objected, and the court cautioned Janfaza “about the clear violation of the court’s ruling,” the judge recalled.
Once Almánzar won her resounding victory, her lawyers asked that Janfaza be held in contempt for the gang question and for referencing evidence that was not introduced during the trial in his closing argument. In response, Janfaza claimed that he was sleep-deprived during the trial, that his office manager had drafted his questions for Almánzar, and that his addition of the phrase “at this time” got him around the rule about no mention of “prior” bad acts.
“The court is not persuaded by any of these arguments,” Judge Fusselman wrote in his Wednesday order. “It is clear that Mr. Janfaza was aware of the [prior] 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. It was no accident. It was not the result of inexperience or stress. It was not the fault of Mr. Janfaza’s office manager. It was a knowing and intentional violation of the court’s ruling.”
The judge directed Janfaza to self-report the sanctions order to the California State Bar within 30 days. He said Janfaza also had to pay the $1,500 by Feb. 27 or the debt would be sent to a private collections vendor without further notice. Janfaza did not respond to a request for comment.
At the trial that ended Sept. 2, jurors found that Ellis failed to prove the rapper physically assaulted her on Feb. 24, 2018, after the women got into a heated confrontation because Almánzar believed Ellis was filming her outside an obstetrician’s office. Almánzar was secretly pregnant with her first child with Migos rapper Offset at the time and hadn’t yet told her parents she was expecting. Almánzar said she believed Ellis was violating her privacy.
During her testimony, Almánzar was adamant she never touched Ellis. She claimed Ellis was the one who stalked her down the hallway and backed her up against a wall. Almánzar said she and Ellis engaged in a “verbal altercation.” “She didn’t hit me. I didn’t hit her. There was no touch,” she testified.
Two star witnesses for the defense corroborated the Grammy-winning musician’s testimony. Dr. David Finke, the obstetrician Almánzar was visiting that day, and receptionist Tierra Malcolm told jurors they ran to the hallway when they heard the women yelling. They said Ellis had a phone in her hand and appeared to be the aggressor. Malcolm testified that a few months after the incident, Ellis called and asked if she would assist with an employment claim related to the incident. Malcolm said she declined. “I didn’t think if I told my truth [that] it would help her,” she told jurors.
Shortly after winning the case in September, Almánzar released special “Courtroom Edition” CD covers for her sophomore album, Am I the Drama?, which showcased her viral moments and hairstyles during the trial. The civil court victory wasn’t her first. She previously scored a $4 million jury verdict against celebrity gossip vlogger Latasha Kebe, professionally known as Tasha K. A New York judge also sided with Almánzar and dismissed a libel lawsuit that named her as a defendant alongside her sister, Hennessy. Almánzar further won at a California-based federal trial where she was accused of using a portion of a man’s back tattoo on the cover of her early mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1
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