Rapper Heavy D Sues Insurance Company Over 1991 Stampede
Published: Monday - October 30, 2006
Words by Allen Starbury
Heavy D (Photo: Umvd)
Rapper Heavy D filed a $1.5 million lawsuit Friday (October 27) against an insurance company he alleges refuses to pay damages to people who have sued him after nine students were trampled in a stampede at a celebrity basketball game he helped organize.
The rapper (real name: Dwight Myers), 39, said in court papers that he bought a $1 million policy in 1989 from National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh that covered him for anything involving his work as an entertainer. Myers says that his work as an entertainer included the celebrity basketball that he, P. Diddy and others organized at the City College of New York's Nat Holman Gymnasium on 1991.
During the event, a stampede occurred after nearly 5,000 young people packed into the gym, which had a capacity of only 2,700. When eventgoers tried to exit down a crowded stairwell to a closed door, nine were crushed at the bottom.
Myers filed suit in Manhattan's state Supreme Court requesting reimbursement of payments to victims or their families he had paid. The rapper's lawyer, Paul Martin, told the Associated Press Monday (October 30) that the lawsuit seeks a determination of how much National Union will have to pay his client.
The rapper seeks reimbursement of $791,899, plus interest of $381,167, for personal-injury and wrongful-death claims, in addition to $324,919 for legal fees and costs incurred in suing the insurance company, who according to Myer's suit, has exhausted its legal appeals.
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