The rapper Cardi B smiled and waved to cheering fans as she left the Santa Ana courthouse Friday afternoon following a federal jury’s decision in her favor in a lawsuit over her debut album cover art.
In a landslide decision, the jury ruled in Cardi’s favor, finding that the cover art for her 2017 mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1, was “substantially similar” to the work of artist Kevin Michael Brophy, but that there was “no real and actual exploitation of another’s work” by Cardi.
The verdict came after just three hours of deliberation. Brophy had sued Cardi, saying that the rapper had infringed on his copyright to a similar illustration of a woman pointing a gun in the air.
He had previously offered to settle the case for $15,000, but Cardi’s attorneys had pushed for the case to go to trial.
Outside the courthouse, Cardi’s attorneys said that the result was “better than expected.”
