Fiddy Cent penis enlargement lawsuit will go forward

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A federal judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 50 Cent that accused a Miami medical spa of falsely suggesting that he’d had penis surgery, ruling the rapper might have a valid case.

The rapper’s lawsuit claims that Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa exploited an innocent photo he’d “graciously agreed” to take with her to imply that he was a client — and, more startlingly, that he had received penile enhancement surgery as part of his work.

Kogan strongly denies the allegations and immediately moved to dismiss the case, saying 50 actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. But in a decision Monday, Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. denied that motion, saying the lawsuit’s allegations were strong enough to survive the earliest stages of the case.

Among other things, Kogan defended herself by arguing that her Instagram post featuring the image merely thanked 50 for visiting her medical office and didn’t directly suggest that he’d endorsed the practice. But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Scola said that argument was “simply wrong.”

“As the proverbial saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words,” Scola wrote. “This one in particular depicts a worldwide celebrity next to Kogan with MedSpa’s name repeated all throughout the background. The promotional value is evident.”

Based on the claims in the lawsuit, the judge said the photo did more than just “thank” the rapper, whose birth name is Curtis James Jackson III: “Read in the light most favorable to Jackson, the defendants’ ‘thanks’ serves as a humblebrag. It is self-promotion.” The judge then offered up the dictionary definition of a “humblebrag” in a footnote.

Such a ruling does not mean 50 Cent has won the lawsuit. It merely means the case will head into discovery — the process during which both sides exchange key evidence — and toward an eventual trial where 50 will try to prove such allegations. But it bodes well for any litigant for a judge to rule that, if proven true, your allegations are valid.

An attorney for Kogan declined to comment on the decision.

50 Cent sued Kogan in September, arguing that he took a photo with “someone he thought was a fan” and had “never consented” to the use of the image for commercial purposes in any form. He says Kogan not only posted the image to Instagram herself but also engineered an article on the website The Shade Room that used the post to make the “false insinuation” that she’d provided him with penile enhancement.

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