Tuesday, September 28, 2004
some outkast news:
Parks' Dementia Can't Stop Rap Suit
(E! Online, 09/22/2004 7:35 PM)
By Charlie Amter
Rosa Parks may have dementia, but she is still moving forward with her lawsuit against hip-hop heavyweights OutKast.
Lawyers representing the famed civil-rights pioneer filed papers Monday naming the condition preventing her from testifying in her trademark and defamation dust-up with the Grammy-winning hip-hop act.
In July, Parks was ordered by a federal judge to comply with defense requests about why the 91-year-old claimed she could not testify.
In August, Parks honored that ruling by asking her doctor to go ahead and open up her medical file. However, the exact nature of her condition, dementia, was not known publicly until this week. According to medicinenet.com, dementia is defined as a group of symptoms, including memory loss and a decline in thinking skills, that is similar to Alzheimer's.
Defense lawyers representing OutKast's label, BMG (OutKast has officially been dropped as a defendant in the case), had asked to interview Parks to explain her claims of emotional and mental distress due to the rap group's 1998 song "Rosa Parks." Now, Team OutKast will only be able to question Parks' doctor, Joel Steinberg, about her dementia during a hearing in October. A trial is scheduled to start Jan. 10 in Detroit.
Parks originally filed her lawsuit against the hip-hop duo in 1999, accusing Big Boi and Andre 3000 and record company BMG of profiting off her moniker by appropriating it for the 1998 tune "Rosa Parks" and falsely suggesting the song was endorsed by her.
The lawsuit was initially tossed out by a lower court, then reinstated. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the reinstatement.
Parks, who famously refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus 49 years ago, wants her name removed from future versions of OutKast's Aquemini album.
Unless a settlement is reached, lawyers for BMG will have to convince a jury in Detroit, where legal proceedings have been creeping along for years now, that OutKast was not trying to profit off of Parks' name with their hit song, which features the lyrics: "Ah-ha/Hush that fuss/Everybody move to the back of the bus."
