Rapper The Game loses another court appeal over a 7.13 million judgment

California's Second District Court of Appeal has affirmed a lower court order in Priscilla Rainey's enforcement case against The Game, in an opinion filed August 26. The ruling keeps a December 2023 judgment intact and leaves her long-running collection campaign in place.

That 2023 judgment included orders unwinding transfers of the rapper's Calabasas home, a stake in a company and The Game trademark. The appellate panel also ordered him to cover Rainey's costs from this appeal.

The challenge turned on notice rather than the merits. The Game, whose legal name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, argued the default judgment in Rainey's 2021 asset-transfer lawsuit was void because of problems with the mailed documents, a courthouse address and the published summons.

The court rejected all of it. Rainey's representatives had tried to serve him six times at his gated home and once elsewhere before getting permission to publish the summons. The panel wrote that a summons exists to give notice of the action and the timeframe to respond, and found this one substantially complied with state law.

The debt goes back a decade. Rainey sued in 2015 over an incident during production of Taylor's VH1 series She's Got Game, and in November 2016 a federal jury found him liable for sexual battery, awarding 1.13 million dollars in compensatory damages and 6 million in punitive damages, for a total of 7,130,100 dollars. He denied the allegations, and the Seventh Circuit upheld the verdict in 2019.

Winning it was easier than collecting it. The appeals court that reviewed the case said Taylor did not take the litigation seriously, having evaded process, dodged a settlement conference and skipped the trial. Courts have since given Rainey control of L.A. Prolific Records and directed Born 2 Rap and publishing income her way, with more than 500,000 dollars redirected by early 2025.

Which brings the campaign to his new record. The Documentary III arrived on August 21, and while the appellate opinion does not award Rainey the album or its royalties, existing collection orders could reach his share of the income. Whether they do depends on how that money falls under the orders already in force. Other hip-hop figures have been in court over adjacent claims this year, including Lil Durk's request for scholars to explain drill to jurors.