Lady Gaga arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
A woman’s attempt to sue Lady Gaga over reward money for the singer’s stolen pets has gone to the dogs.
A judge in Los Angeles has reportedly dismissed Jennifer McBride’s lawsuit demanding that the superstar pay the $500,000 reward money she offered after the violent theft of two of her three dogs — dogs that McBride herself had apparently helped to steal.
Judge Holly J. Fujie found that McBride’s involvement in the February 2021 theft precluded her from collecting the reward, TMZ reported Monday.
Allowing McBride to pursue the lawsuit “would allow her to benefit from her admitted wrongdoing,” the court’s order reportedly says.
McBride was the one who brought the dogs to the Los Angeles Police Department two days after they were stolen from dog walker Ryan Fischer, who was shot in the chest and beaten by three assailants during the robbery. He was injured but survived.
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Two days later, Lady Gaga tweeted that she would pay $500,000 for the safe return of the two dogs, “no questions asked.”
At the time of the theft, McBride, who was reportedly in a relationship with the father of one of the men involved in the robbery, told police that she happened upon the dogs by chance and that she didn’t know who the owner was. That story fell apart under LAPD scrutiny; in truth, McBride was part of the plot to steal the little dogs — although it does appear that the perpetrators didn’t know who the dogs belonged to, only that French Bulldogs had a high resale value — and she was ultimately convicted of a felony for knowingly receiving stolen property and sentenced to two years of probation.
As Law&Crime previously reported, McBride sued Lady Gaga in July 2022, insisting that she was owed the reward money.
“The law does not allow a person to commit a crime and then profit from it,” Lady Gaga’s lawyer Greta Williams wrote in a demurrer in response to McBride’s complaint.
According to TMZ, McBride has 20 days to amend her complaint.
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