A federal court in Manhattan has summoned Enigmatic former Roc-A-Fella honcho Damon Dash to court and ordered him to explain why he has refused to turn over pivotal papers related to a $4 million judgment. If he doesn't do so by the end of this month, he might be looking not just at paperwork, but at handcuffs.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger put it in no uncertain terms: Dash either must appear in court on July 31, 2025, at 10:00 A.M., prepared to explain himself, or the court will consider issuing a warrant for his arrest. It's the latest twist in a protracted legal saga that began with the 2019 film "Dear Frank," a project from which Dash was removed, only to claim later he believed he still owned a portion of it.
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The consequences of that spat have hardly been trivial. On October 7, 2020, Dash sent a tweet stating that he'd settle for $5 million, leading the two parties to agree to mediation, which Dash then withdrew. Trailer filmmaker Josh Webber and Muddy Water Pictures sued Dash for defamation and copyright infringement. In 2022, after a messy back-and-forth, including Dash's failure to attend the court-ordered mediation, a judge awarded them an $805,000 judgment. They would only get worse after Dash made inflammatory statements about Webber on the podcast "Earn Your Leisure," which helped lead to a $4 million default judgment earlier this year.
Dash and his company, Poppington LLC, were also ordered to provide affidavits and copies of acquisition documentation in connection with several businesses and copyrights by July 10, 2025. That deadline passed without any documents being filed. As of July 14, 2025, the court still had not received them. Judge Lehrburger is not laughing and says that Dash's conduct is part of a "pattern of non-compliance and delay."
According to the government, the necessary paperwork is essential because it is required to permit the United States Marshal to sell Dash's assets, including Dash Films, Inc., Bluroc, LLC, and 1996 Songs, LLC, at public auction to satisfy the judgment. After the judgment is paid, any remaining money will go to Dash, but if he continues to delay, he may lose more than a few dollars or his freedom.
The pony-farming prober's lawyers have filed papers asking the judge to issue a warrant for Damon Dash's arrest and order a transfer of the contested assets to the U.S. Marshal. Their rancor is palpable: The money was gone by December, after Dash sold his third of Roc-A-Fella Records for a little more than $1 million and still had some outstanding obligations to New York State to siphon off the proceeds.
The answer is: turn in the documents by July 30. If he does that, he can skip the hearing and jail time. If not, July 31, 2025, could be the day Damon Dash goes from hip-hop mogul to legal cautionary tale.
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