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.”
Image via Loto-Québec
Nathan Brown*
Sheeran performs onstage last year in Newark, New Jersey.
More Pop Stars Should Call Ed Sheeran to Write Their Songs
It has been two years since the Netflix series Pop Star Academy brought Katseye together, and the girl group still hasn’t had a truly universal hit. They’ve had popular songs, sure. There’s the smooth, Latin-pop-inspired “Gabriela,” which peaked at Number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, and of course “Gnarly,” the skittering viral track about fried chicken, Takis, and Teslas. “Internet Girl” seemed promising when Katseye premiered it on tour, but the studio recording that arrived at the top of the year features some bizarre vocal choices that unravel the track. “Pinky Up” barely cut through the discourse about their future as a group after HYBE and Geffen announced member Manon Bannerman would embark on an indefinite hiatus.
Katseye have been downplaying their full potential, and their years of training, with each release. A likely pop figure might be the key to getting them back on track. Their latest single, “Animal,” penned by Ed Sheeran alongside Johnny McDaid and producers Omer Fedi and Blake Slatkin, is one of their best. It’s not an incredibly ambitious song, but it’s catchy and spirited enough to not come across as predictable — and it gives them a real shot at longevity in the pop arena. Sheeran knows how to write a pop hit that sticks, even when it’s not for himself. In fact, more pop stars should call him to write their songs.
“Nobody knows you’re outta control/But I see a side behind the closed doors,” the girls sing on the chorus from “Animal,” trading off on the role throughout the song. “They get a glimpse here on the dance floor/You move like an animal.” It’s classic boots-on-the-ground reporting from the dance floor, a pretty hard trope to mess up in pop. Lara gets the best one-liner on the song, with the pre-chorus: “Your body gets twisted and tangled in mine/Love so good, how could this be free?/I keep your secret safe with me.”
For a minute, “Animal” sounds like it could have been ripped from one of Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox-era hard drives. But when the chorus kicks in over plucky acoustic guitars, any number of Sheeran singles spring to mind: “Sing,” “Azizam,” “I Don’t Care.” In an Instagram post, Sheeran revealed he got in touch with Katseye after hearing “Gnarly” for the first time. “I was in Mexico and loved it,” he wrote. “Said I was a fan and reached out to them to see if I could write them a song.” On Katseye’s “Countdown to Animal” livestream, hosted on the evening of the song’s release, Lara teased, “A very special person wrote it, which is also really cool.”
Asked about the difference between “Pinky Up” and “Animal,” the group members quickly pointed out that they’re actually (and finally) singing on this one, and it’s geared toward more widespread consumption. “‘Pinky Up’ is more like a rave in the club,” Daniela said. “But ‘Animal’ is more like you’ll listen to it at the grocery store, in the car on the radio, or you’ll hear it at the mall just walking around.” It’s just what Katseye needs, and it proves their ambitions as a group extend beyond brand deals and dance breaks.
Not a particularly polarizing artist, Sheeran was the logical songwriter to turn to. He’s still selling out stadiums over a decade into his career, even after wedding ballads like “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect” pushed many to write him off as corny. More flashy swings, like “Shape of You” and “Shivers,” have eclipsed the acoustic singer-songwriter craftsmanship of his first two albums. And yet, it’s their success that has allowed him to sustain a career of this magnitude for so long. He’s worked this magic for other artists, too.
When Justin Bieber returned with Purpose in 2015, he released “Sorry” and “Love Yourself” just over two weeks apart. “Sorry” served as the big party hit, a Skrillex and BloodPop production with Julia Michaels in the credits. Bieber had already racked up a few like that by this point in his career, including “Beauty and a Beat.” But stripped down to just his vocals and a guitar, “Love Yourself” added new dimension to Bieber’s position in pop. Sheeran originally wrote the song for his album Divide. “Going from a song that would have never been released to the biggest song of last year,” he said in 2017, “it just shows you that you shouldn’t always write stuff off.”
It isn’t rare for Sheeran to think of other artists while in sessions. “Every single album that I’ve ever done, I’ve always gone, on the side, ‘Let’s try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna,’” he said last year. While he hasn’t landed a hit with her, his songs have ended up on albums from One Direction (the acoustic ballad “Little Things,” written by Sheeran, followed up the bubbly “Live While We’re Young” in 2012) and Shawn Mendes. Sheeran gifted Mendes the hook for what would become “Fallin’ All in You” from 2018’s Shawn Mendes. The snap and sway, first-dance-ready ballad remains one of Mendes’ highlights.
In a perfect alternate universe, Sheeran would have sent him “Bad Habits,” too, instead of keeping the hit for himself. The upbeat record would have marked a much needed return to form for Mendes, one of pop’s most consistent hitmakers until he started down the confessional singer-songwriter route. Coming from Sheeran, who doesn’t play the main pop-boy role as efficiently — he’ll always prefer an acoustic guitar, at the end of the day — it did little to restore the balance in a post-pandemic pop ecosystem dominated by bedroom pop and quarantine hits crafted for TikTok.
Pop has been in a peculiar place for a little while now. Newer acts are breaking through with slow-burning hits, but are also struggling to maintain that success over time. Meanwhile, more veteran artists are scoring late-career breakthroughs, or leaning heavily into diaristic releases that trade off on their personal narrative. Some artists are enlisting fewer collaborators — preferring to write in tight-knit camps with friends — and taking the songwriting lead themselves more often, like Ariana Grande’s solo effort on “Hate That I Made You Love Me.” Still, sometimes great performers aren’t great songwriters. That’s OK. Balance restoration comes through remembering collaboration and timing are key.
Before “Gabriela” ended up with Katseye, it had been recorded by both Little Mix and Anitta. The song earned them a nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 2026 Grammy Awards. Way back in 2018, Little Mix launched their fifth album, LM5, with “Woman Like Me,” co-written by Sheeran and Jess Glynne, who began the song for her own album, Always in Between, before passing it along. When the group hit pause to pursue solo projects, Sheeran appeared in the credits for Perrie Edwards’ debut single, “Forget About Us.” The track was criticized for being too impersonal, the kind of song anyone could sing. Sometimes that’s the point. At least it’s catchy and she’s actually singing.
Between HYBE and Geffen, Katseye have too many resources at their disposal to add duds to their discography. In about two weeks, the girl group will release its third EP, Wild, featuring both “Pinky Up” and “Animal.” The EP release model has allowed Katseye to hedge the debut album conversation for a while, but the day will come eventually. When it does, it wouldn’t hurt to see what else someone like Sheeran might have up their sleeve. It could be another hit.