Lady Gaga Gets Big Legal Victory in Dognapping Case

Lady Gaga does not owe Jennifer McBride the $500,000 reward the singer and actress offered in exchange for the return of her French bulldogs following their February 2021 dognapping, a Los Angeles judge ruled earlier this month. Court documents obtained by PEOPLE show the judge ruled in Gaga's favor when it came to refusing reward payment in the case of McBride, who was determined to have been an accomplice in Koji and Gustav's abduction. 

McBride previously filed a lawsuit against Gaga in February, claiming she was entitled to the reward and an additional $1.5 million in additional damages, saying that by stating there were "no questions asked" alongside the initial reward offering and then failing to pay, the "Poker Face" artist had committed a breach of contract, fraud by false promise and fraud by misrepresentation.

Judge Holly J. Fujie ruled however that McBride's complaint was "legally insufficient in its entirety" due to her involvement in the theft, as McBride pleaded no contest to charges of receiving stolen property in 2022. She was therefore "not entitled to thereafter benefit from their wrongdoing by seeking to enforce the contract." Fujie's ruling comes after McBride was given 20 days to amend her filing and to claim she was not involved in the theft and only "took possession" of the dogs in order to return them. McBride will not be allowed to make another revised complaint.

In April 2021, McBride was one of six people arrested for the dognapping, which involved the shooting of dog walker Ryan Fischer. Fischer suffered a collapsed lung in the shooting and said in court that he had gone into debt since the incident after recovering while staying with the A Star Is Born actress. At the time of the dognapping, McBride was dating another accomplice, Harold White, who is the father of Jaylin White. Jaylin was involved in the robbery and shooting along with James Jackson and Lafayette Whaley.

McBride and Harold were referred to at the time as "accessories after the initial crime" and were held on suspicion of accessory after the fact to attempted murder. McBride ended up only pleading no contest to charges of receiving stolen property. Jackson, who shot Fischer, pleaded no contest to attempted murder with great bodily injury and was sentenced in December 2022 to 21 years in prison.