Two months after pleading guilty to physically attacking a California homeowner, rapper DaBaby won a last-minute delay in his trial over the man’s related battery lawsuit. The rapper, born Jonathan Kirk, hired a new lawyer last week, with the attorney saying he needed time to get up to speed.
The judge who granted the reprieve warned it would be a short-lived suspension considering the underlying lawsuit is three-and-a-half years old. She also pointed out that the parallel criminal conviction means Kirk no longer has Fifth Amendment concerns holding up his expected testimony.
“While I appreciate you are new to the case, everyone else is not. So if this is going to go to trial, it’s going to go soon,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Cherol J. Nellon told Kirk’s new lawyer, Alec Rishwain. “This is a 2021 case. In the whole scheme of things, I just think this case needs to go to trial.”
Rishwain said he previously worked with Kirk before leaving the rapper’s prior defense firm, so he wasn’t starting from scratch. “I was involved in the case but have not been involved for eight months now,” he said. “I’m not prepared at all to try the case, but I will be.”
The homeowner plaintiff, Gary Pagar, filed his lawsuit in February 2021. He claims Kirk beat, punched, spat on, threatened, shoved, and robbed him when he tried to break up an unauthorized video shoot at his Los Angeles rental property in December 2020.
Pagar, 68, was in the courtroom Monday, apparently ready for trial. His lawyer told the court that a settlement offer had been sent to Kirk, 32, previously. “We think given that Mr. Kirk has pleaded guilty to battery, the case should settle,” lawyer Caleb Mason told Judge Nellon. Rishwain said he wanted a new trial date.
In recent filings leading up to the Monday morning hearing, the opposing sides have battled over the evidence they want admitted or excluded at trial. Kirk’s prior legal team hinted at their defense strategy when they argued jurors should be allowed to hear that Pagar said the N-word in a caught-on-video utterance during the confrontation.
“Plaintiff admits that there is no factual dispute as to whether he yelled the ‘N-word’ to Kirk yet conveniently seeks to argue that such a racial slur is irrelevant to the claim of battery,” Kirk’s prior lawyer Christina Nordsten wrote in an Aug. 12 filing. “A jury may find that the alleged battery was the consequence of a sudden heat resulting from plaintiff’s provocation, thus barring any potential award of punitive damages.”
Pagar’s lawyers are asking the court to exclude the racist speech at trial. “After defendant Jonathan Kirk punched Plaintiff Gary Pagar in the face without warning, knocking out his tooth and leaving him lying on the ground bleeding profusely; and after Mr. Kirk’s associates had pushed, taunted, threatened, and spat on Mr. Pagar, stolen his phone, and vandalized his house — after these events, Mr. Pagar uttered the ‘N-word.’ The sequence of events is undisputed: it is on video. Any reference to or evidence of that utterance should be excluded from trial because it is irrelevant to any claim or defense and will cause undue and unfair prejudice to Mr. Pagar,” the lawyers wrote in a recent filing.
While seeking to protect their own client’s image, Pagar’s lawyers have asked the court to let them introduce evidence showing Kirk has battered people on “at least nine other occasions,” including when he allegedly struck a woman in the face at a Florida concert in 2020. Kirk’s lawyers argue such evidence should be off limits. “There is only one reason for plaintiff to refer to other crimes, bad acts, lawsuits, or character traits of Kirk: to make the jury believe that Kirk has bad character or a propensity for criminal behavior and punish him for it. Such evidence, testimony, or references must be excluded from this trial,” Kirk’s prior legal team wrote in a separate Aug. 12 filing.
Before his misdemeanor battery conviction related to Pagar, Kirk previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon after he fatally shot 19-year-old Jaylin Craig at a North Carolina Walmart in 2018. Kirk claimed self-defense, but the dead man’s family disputes that, claiming the musician instigated the physical dispute that led up to the shooting. Video previously obtained by Rolling Stone appears to support the family’s claim.
In his lawsuit, Pagar claims he rented his six-bedroom luxury home to Kirk in November 2020 under a vacation lease that explicitly stated no more than 12 people could occupy the property amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Pagar alleges Kirk violated the agreement almost immediately, inviting some 40 people to the estate to film a video for the song “Play U Lay,” starring rapper Stunna 4 Vegas and social media personality Jake Paul.
According to the complaint, Kirk and his entourage disabled the home’s Nest security camera shortly after Pagar reached out and demanded that the “commercial” shoot be terminated. When Pagar showed up in person to enforce the lease agreement, Kirk allegedly “sucker-punched (him) in the face, knocking out his tooth and leaving him bruised and bloodied,” the lawsuit states.
Pagar claims Kirk and a group of men swarmed him in front of his house, “pushing him, shoving, spitting on him, threatening him, and taunting him.” He says Kirk and the men “tossed” his phone back and forth and scratched his car with keys. His lawsuit includes claims for fraud, breach of contract and trespassing.
