*According to the New York Post, Busta Rhymes settled a lawsuit filed against him by a former fan who claimed he was beaten by the embattled rapper and his bodyguard. The settlement came just a day before he was scheduled to appear before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman in an attempt to have the $100,000 judgment thrown out.
Melvin Smith, the plaintiff, alleged that Rhymes and a bodyguard assaulted him at Gramercy Deli on Park Avenue in 2005, after he went up to Rhymes to request an autograph.
Rhymes previously defaulted in the case by failing to respond, but he recently filed an affidavit claiming he never knew about the lawsuit because he was never served with a copy of the legal papers. He said process servers went to his ex-girlfriend's home in Baldwin, L.I. instead of his house.
"While I own the property, I have no access to it," Rhymes said in the affidavit, adding, "I was required" by court order "to provide this home for the mother of my three children, from whom I am estranged and with whom I have been embroiled in child-custody proceedings for over two years."
Rhymes also declared in the affidavit that he never assaulted Smith.
Terms of the settlement are undisclosed.