A
Washington Supreme Court declined to reinstate a libel lawsuit that was initially
filed by C. Delores Tucker, the deceased Civil Rights Activist and foe of the
late Tupac Shakur.The
lawsuit was directed to a pair of Philadelphia papers–The Philadelphia Daily
News and The Legal Intelligencer–for reporting that Tucker’s sex life
had suffered due to the lyrics of Shakur.After
the 1996 death of the rapper, Tucker sued his estate for his rhyming of her surname
with an obscenity on a track from his 1996 album All Eyez on Me.On
the song "How Do U Want It?", Tupac rapped "Delores Tucker you’s
a motherf***er / Instead of trying to help a n***a you destroy your brother."William
Tucker, the spouse of the well-known rap critic, attempted to revive the libel
suit, according to the Associated Press, but Pennsylvania state courts
dismissed the case on Monday.The
legality of the case honed in on the context in which the word "consortium"
was used in Tucker’s original filing against Shakur. The
Philadelphia papers took loss of consortium to mean a loss in sexual activity,
but Tucker said it meant an absence of other familial matters like the "family
union."Past
libel suits against Time and Newsweek magazines were dismissed,
as was the 1997 legal move against Shakur’s estate.
