Nicki Minaj has avoided the sale of her $20 million Hidden Hills mansion to pay the $500,000 default judgment that a security guard won after suing the “Starships” rapper and her husband over his alleged assault at a concert in Germany.
“She has satisfied the judgment,” the guard’s lawyer, Paul Saso, tells Rolling Stone. “It required us going to the one-yard line.”
Saso confirmed the agreement just as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Cindy Pánuco was on the brink of entering a blockbuster decision to sell the home at a hearing on Thursday afternoon. Plaintiff Thomas Weidenmuller nearly won the ruling in November, but he faced a delay because he lacked a bank statement detailing Minaj’s payments on her $13.3 million mortgage and the daily interest accrual. The judge said that if the house didn’t fetch the expected price, she would need to confirm that a lower sale price would still be sufficient to satisfy all liens and levies.
When Saso informed the court of the “eleventh-hour development,” Judge Pánuco seemed relieved. She thanked him for his patience and diligence. “I wanted to make sure we got this right. It was a big thing. I’m glad this was resolved in a way that makes sense for all of the parties,” the judge said.
Outside the courthouse, Saso said his client was relieved as well. “He’s incredibly gratified and happy. It’s been a long time coming to have justice finally done here,” the lawyer said. “He’s very happy for himself. He suffered a very heinous attack, years ago, and not only did it take years to achieve the judgment, but it then took nearly two years in order to enforce that judgment.” The lawyer said he never expected the case to require that he “put a levee on a multimillionaire’s house, and go to the last 24 hours before she decides to satisfy the judgment.”
Saso said he hopes the resolution will be a turning point for the controversial musician who recently drew backlash for calling former CNN anchor Don Lemon a homophobic slur over one of his reports on protests in Minneapolis. She also bashed California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a series of X posts last month after he made a statement supporting trans youth.
“She has been very vocal online recently and demeaning to various types of people, and she’s certainly been very vocal about her thoughts on the gay and trans community,” Saso said. “I’m happy that this case has helped her transition – transition from a person who avoids responsibility to someone who is being forced to take responsibility. And my hope is that it helps her transition from a person of violence to a person of peace.”
Weidenmuller filed his application for the order last October, telling the court he tried to enforce his default judgment through less extreme measures, but Minaj and her husband, Kenneth Petty, hadn’t responded. He said attempts to garnish payments flowing to Minaj proved futile, claiming seven “potential garnishees” either failed to respond or claimed they had no accounts payable to the singer.
Minaj’s eight-bedroom luxury home has a $13,258,000 mortgage lien, and Minaj, as the sole owner, would have been entitled to a $722,151 homestead exemption, the application said. With the home recently appraised at $20 million, a sale was expected to yield approximately $6 million in funds once the lien and exception were paid.
The application described Minaj as a global music superstar with an estimated net worth of at least $150 million. “There is little doubt that she is highly capable of paying the judgment in full, and yet, she has refused to do so despite multiple written requests for payment and levies served upon several of her suspected creditors,” the filing said.
Weidenmuller filed his underlying lawsuit in January 2022. He claimed Petty ambushed him from behind and sucker punched him in the face because he was upset Weidenmuller had stepped in to defend a female security guard during a dispute with Minaj backstage at a 2019 concert in Frankfurt.
According to Weidenmuller, Minaj had blamed the female guard for allowing a fan to breach a barricade and climb onstage with her. Minaj berated the female guard while recording the exchange. Weidenmuller says he intervened to warn Minaj the guard’s career might be “ruined” if Minaj shared the video. In response, Minaj allegedly threw a shoe at Weidenmuller but missed. Petty then accused Weidenmuller of disrespecting Minaj and allegedly punched Weidenmuller in the face, leaving him “stunned and disoriented,” the lawsuit claimed.
“I felt a blinding pain in my head, neck, face, and jaw. I could tell in that instant that something was seriously wrong with my jaw,” he wrote in a court filing. Weidenmuller said medics called an ambulance to take him to a hospital, where he underwent the first of several surgeries and remained for 10 days.
“I now have five plates in my jaw, and my jaw has not yet been fully reconstructed. The doctors must still insert implants into my jaw as a part of the reconstruction process. In the interim, the doctors have inserted donor bones from a deceased person into my mouth in order to preserve space for the future implants,” he wrote in a sworn statement.
Weidenmuller previously asked for around $21,000 to cover medical bills and $700,000 for his ongoing injury along with pain and suffering. The judge trimmed it down to $503,318 when she awarded the money under a default judgment because Minaj and Petty never responded to the lawsuit.
The German security guard and his lawyers told the court they made repeated attempts to serve Minaj and Petty with the lawsuit but were never successful. They mailed copies and sent a process server to the couple’s gated community just west of Los Angeles, but never made contact. They eventually published the summons in a newspaper.
A rep for Minaj and Petty did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone. The couple married in 2019 and welcomed a son a year later. Petty, 47, remains a defendant in a sexual assault lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court by Jennifer Hough, the woman at the center of Petty’s 1994 attempted rape conviction.
Minaj has sparked controversy for other reasons beyond her social media posts. The “Barbie World” singer made a surprise appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest as Erika Kirk, the conservative activist and widow of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, gushed over Minaj’s anti-Newsom tweets. Minaj then professed her “love” for President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. She later called for Lemon’s arrest over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church, leading the now-independent journalist to label her “ignorant.”
“She doesn’t understand politics. She doesn’t understand journalism,” Lemon said. “And I’m not surprised that she is weighing in on something that is beyond her capacity.”
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