Lady Gaga Fires Back At Former Producer’s Lawsuit

News broke this past week that Lady Gaga was being sued for $30.5 million by her former producer and ex-boyfriend Rob Fusari. Fusari claimed that Gaga was his protege and former girlfriend and she ditched him as her career took off. He stated in the lawsuit that they co-wrote songs such as “Paparazzi” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.” Fusari also said he came up with her stage name and helped get her record deal.

According to the lawsuit, Lady Gaga and Fusari’s relationship turned romantic and then became a business partnership in May 2006, when they created a joint venture called Team Love Child LLC to promote her career. Fusari’s share was 20 percent.

Lady Gaga and her lawyer, Charles Ortner, are firing back. In their response, Ortner wrote that the deal was “structured in such a way as to mask its true purpose — to provide to the defendants unlawful compensation for their services as unlicensed employment agents.”

Ortner also wrote that Fusari and his company violated statutes that prohibited them from “acting as employment agents without a license and charging Lady Gaga an unlawful fee for their purported services.”

Fusari’s lawyer, Robert S. Meloni, called the claim “ludicrous” in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

“Fusari is a PARTNER in the Team Love LLC with Gag and her father (through their company Mermaid),” Meloni wrote. “Rob was no more of an ‘agent’ for her than she is a Roman Catholic nun.”

So what do you guys think? Does Fusari deserve a piece of Gaga’s pie?