Kid Rock: Fighting Helped My Career

A lawyer asks Kid Rock about fighting... we're going to be here a while

Kid Rock says he has benefited professionally from an image of getting involved in fights, but that doesn't make him liable for what three men say happened outside a Hollywood nightclub.

The personal critique came in a deposition stemming from a lawsuit by three men who claim they were assaulted March 22 by Kid Rock and members of a rap group outside Teddy's nightclub at the Hollywood Roosevelt.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Howard R. Levine asked Kid Rock -- real name: Robert Ritchie -- whether, in the past  10 years, he has promoted or publicized himself to his advantage as being  involved in physical confrontations -- regardless of his denial of liability in  the current lawsuit.

"I'm sure I have...," Ritchie replied. "It's all part of who you  are. It's all just part of everything."

In court papers, Levine wrote that the entertainer "is well-known for somehow finding physically violent and legal troubles whenever he goes out on  the town... either as part of a business promotion to sell the brand of bad boy music... or to go out and live the public relations persona."

Ritche's Sept. 22 deposition continues: "I've been involved with violent lifestyles, probably. When I was young, I would live in the projects on the east side of  Detroit ... where there was gang activity and gun shootouts and drugs... for sale on the corners and things like that."

Michael Medlin, Carlos Bonilla and Jose Perez claim the singer and  members of the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. attacked them outside the Roosevelt Hotel nightclub. The lawsuit states that the three men approached Kid Rock and his entourage with autograph books, bags and pocket cameras.

A lawyer for the Roosevelt asked that the hotel be dismissed as a defendant. The excerpts from Ritche's deposition are in papers filed in opposition to the hotel's motion to be dismissed.

A Jan. 15 hearing is set for that motion.

A lawyer for the hotel said the fight occurred on a public sidewalk and not on his client's property.  Therefore, all allegations against the landmark establishment should be  dismissed, the hotel's attorney argued.

As for Kid Rock's role, the plaintiffs claim, "Kid Rock himself owed a duty to... ensure  that his own actions, and the actions of those he had control over, such as  friends, security, entourage and others associated with him, would do nothing to cause injury to foreseeable persons such as plaintiffs."

A lawyer for Kid Rock said that his client's bodyguards  had an obligation to protect him, but did not have the duty to shield the public from actions by the entertainer. He also said that Ritchie, 38, was not responsible for any assaults his friends and associates might have committed against the three men.
 

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