A judge has ruled that Lady Gaga will not have to pay up the promised $500,000 reward following the safe return of her stolen dogs.
The 37-year-old recording artist, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, successfully had Jennifer McBride’s request for the reward money thrown out for good, per a report from People. McBride, 53, had filed a lawsuit against the singer in February, demanding the reward plus $1.5 million in additional damages.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Holly J. Fujie said McBride’s complaint was “legally insufficient in its entirety” due to her “involvement in the theft.” The judge further noted that McBride was indicted and pleaded no contest to charges of receiving stolen property in 2022, making her “not entitled to thereafter benefit from their wrongdoing by seeking to enforce the contract.”
The dog theft incident occurred in February 2021. James Howard Jackson and two others drove around Hollywood “looking for French bulldogs,” prosecutors said. They were not specifically seeking the Grammy Award-winning pop star’s pets.
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They encountered Germanotta’s dog walker Ryan Fisher, who was walking the singer’s two dogs, Koji and Gustavto. Fisher was assaulted and shot before the animals were taken. Jackson pleaded no contest to attempted murder in December 2022 and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Fisher called the violence a “very close call with death” and later had to have part of his lung removed following the incident. Germanotta promised to pay all his medical bills, which neared six figures, and to pay for counseling for her employee.
McBride returned the stolen dogs several days later and was initially not suspected of being connected to the case. But later, it was discovered that the woman was in a romantic relationship with Harold White, the father of Jackson’s accomplice Jaylin White.
McBride maintains she was “in no way involved in the theft” of Germanotta’s dogs and claimed she only “took possession” of the stolen animals so she could return them to the “Bad Romance” singer. She was arrested along with Jackson and his accomplices in April 2021. McBride received two years probation after pleading no contest to one count of receiving stolen property.