A federal judge dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of the late Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Christopher Wallace, as of Monday of this week.
Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted a request made by the defendants - the city of Los Angeles and former LAPD officer Rafeal Perez - dropping the case on grounds that family failed to file the suit within the designated time frame.
The slaying of The Notorious B.I.G. (1972-1997) remains unsolved.
The family of the late New York rapper filed the secondary lawsuit in April 2007, which claimed Rafael Perez conspired to murder The Notorious B.I.G. with fellow former police officers David Mack and Nino Durden.
The rapper’s estate also accused the city of Los Angeles of attempting to cover up the officers’ involvement in the 1997 murder.
“This was not the primary civil-rights claim, that suit is still going forward,” Wallace family’s lead attorney Perry Sanders assured MTV.
“This was a standalone action based on state laws, but the rigorous rules state that if you don’t file suit within six months, then the suit cannot go forward, and we didn’t find out that Perez was on duty until August 2006.”
Ten years after his unsolved murder in California, The Notorious B.I.G. remains one of the most influential figures in rap and hip-hop, with his posthumously released double-album Life After Death becoming one of the first and only works in that genre to ever achieve diamond (10 million sales) certification.
