50 Cent has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit in which he accused a Miami medical spa of falsely suggesting that he’d had penis surgery, according to court documents filed Friday (March 24).
The rapper claims that Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa exploited an innocent photo he’d “graciously agreed” to take with her to imply that he was a client — and, more startlingly, that he had received penile enhancement surgery as part of his work.
But in a joint filing made Friday in Miami federal court, attorneys for both 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) and Kogan said they had “reached an agreement in principle to settle Mr. Jackson’s claims” and were “in the process of preparing an agreement to finalize and memorialize” the deal.
An attorney for 50 Cent did not immediately return a request for comment. A lawyer for Kogan declined to comment.
50 Cent sued Kogan in September, arguing that he took a photo with “someone he thought was a fan” and had “never consented” to the use of the image for commercial purposes in any form. He says Kogan not only posted the image to Instagram herself but also engineered an article on the website The Shade Room that used the post to make the “false insinuation” that she’d provided him with penile enhancement.
The article in question (“Penis Enhancements Are More Popular Than Ever & BBLs Are Dying Out: Cosmetic Surgery CEO Angela Kogan Speaks On It”) did not directly claim that Jackson had the surgery. But it allegedly said he was a “client” of the practice while repeatedly using the image of him with Kogan, leading Jackson’s lawyers to say the “implication was clear.”
“Defendants’ actions have exposed Jackson to ridicule, caused substantial damage to his professional and personal reputation, and violated his right to control his name and image,” the star’s lawyers wrote at the time. They included social media comments in which users mocked the rapper, including one that “crudely” said the rapper should be called “50 inch.”
Kogan strongly denied the allegations and immediately moved to dismiss the case, saying 50 Cent actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. She argued it was just an “innocuous” use of the photo, not a direct suggestion that he’d endorsed the office.
But in December, Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. denied Kogan’s request to toss out the case, saying that 50 Cent might eventually be able to prove his allegations at trial.
“As the proverbial saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words,” Scola wrote. “This one in particular depicts a worldwide celebrity next to Kogan with MedSpa’s name repeated all throughout the background. The promotional value is evident.”
