Cardi B testified on Wednesday that she didn’t touch a security guard who alleges the rapper cut her face with a fingernail and spat on her in an altercation outside an obstetrician’s office during the hip-hop star’s not-yet-public first pregnancy.
“She couldn’t get a scratch from me because I didn’t touch her,” Cardi said on the stand in her second day of testimony in a Los Angeles county court.
Ron Rosen Janfaza, lawyer for the plaintiff, Emani Ellis, asked her if she had been angry. “Yes I was angry!” Because I’m pregnant!” Cardi replied. “And this girl’s about to beat my ass!”
She acknowledged that the argument got very heated – repeating in court much of the swearing the two did – and that they were chest-to-chest at one point, but said the fight never became physical.
“She didn’t touch me,” Cardi said. “She was going to touch me, but she didn’t get to touch me.”
The obstetrician’s office had been closed to other patients on a Saturday for her privacy. She said Ellis, a security guard for the building, followed her to her fifth-floor appointment. Cardi said she heard Ellis say her name into a phone and appeared to be filming her. Cardi feared Ellis would out the fact that she was pregnant.
“I told her: ‘Why are you recording?’” Cardi testified. “And she said: ‘Oh, my bad.’ She practically apologized.’”
But the argument grew increasingly heated, she said. “As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi said.
Both women are 32 years old and about the same height, but Cardi said Ellis was bigger than her.
“She is like, security-heavy,” Cardi said. “She just looks a little, like she could protect the building.”
Under friendlier questioning from one of her own attorneys, Cardi explained why she was keeping her pregnancy secret at the time, seven months after the release of her first major label single and major hit, Bodak Yellow, when she was still in her “freshman year” of stardom.
Emani Ellis. Photograph: MEGA/GC Images
“I was getting used to things,” she said. “I was just so worried about what everybody was saying and thinking. I thought I was letting a lot of people down.”
But she said, beyond that, she treasures her privacy on all medical matters, “especially something so sacred as a pregnancy. It’s yours.”
A significant chunk of the testimony was spent on the acrylic nails with rhinestones Cardi had that week, and whether they could do the damage that’s alleged. “It wasn’t a shape that was harming, it was coffin-shaped,” she said. “They weren’t sharp.”
Ellis testified earlier in the trial that the incident left her humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required cosmetic surgery. Ellis, who lost her job over the incident, is seeking damages that include medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with punitive damages. She does not specify a total amount in the lawsuit but Cardi said from the stand that she is “suing me for $24m”.
Tierra Malcolm, the receptionist from the doctor’s office who got between the two women and broke up the argument, gave testimony on Wednesday that mostly supported Cardi’s account.
She said she came into the hallway after hearing a ruckus outside but saw no physical fighting. She later noticed a scratch on her own face that she assumed came from Ellis, because she had been facing her with her back to Cardi.
Asked to characterize the argument, Malcolm said she wasn’t sure if she could swear in court. “We’ve heard just about everything so far, so it’s OK,” Judge Ian C Fusselman said to laughs from much of the courtroom.
The testimony came at a small courthouse outside Los Angeles in Alhambra, where trials involving celebrities are very rare. The trial is taking the rest of the week off and is expected to resume, and conclude, next week.
