A judge has ruled Lady Gaga won’t be made to pay the $500k reward money she offered for the safe return of her dogs.
In February 2021, Lady Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Fischer was out with her three French bulldogs when he was shot four times.
Fischer tried to protect the singer’s dogs – Koji, Gustav and Miss Asia – but Gustav and Koji were abducted when the dog walker collapsed ‘bleeding out’ of his lung and Miss Asia ran away.
Thankfully, Miss Asia was later found by police and both Gustav and Koji were returned after Gaga put out a half-a-million reward.
However, the woman who returned the singer’s pets – Jennifer McBride – was discovered as having been involved in the dog theft in the first place, later charged in connection with the robbery and as an accessory to attempted murder.
McBride claimed she’d found the dogs tied to a pole and decided to sue Gaga – real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – in February earlier this year when the singer didn’t make good on the reward money.
The 53-year-old demanded the $500k but also $1.5 million in damages.
McBride’s attorney said the ‘Poker Face’ singer made a ‘no questions asked offer’ and upon failing to cough up the money, had ‘the intent to defraud and induce members of the public, such as Plaintiff’.
In July, it was ruled because of McBride’s ‘involvement in the theft’ her case against Gaga was ‘legally insufficient in its entirety’.
McBride – who was dating the father of Jaylin White who was involved in the robbery and shooting – was sentenced to two years of probation in December 2022 after being found guilty of receiving stolen property.
According to court documents obtained by People, she pleaded no contest to the charges and was subsequently ‘not entitled to thereafter benefit from their wrongdoing by seeking to enforce the contract’.
McBride was given 20 days to amend her filing and yesterday (October 2) the court came to its final decision, finding ‘that nothing alleged in the [first amended complaint] changes this conclusion’.
The case has subsequently been closed, McBride not given another chance to make a revised complaint.
James Howard Jackson – the man who shot at Fischer and abducted Koji and Gustav was sentenced to 21 years in prison after pleading no content to attempted murder.