People in the News

The bubbly 16-year-old from Snellville, Ga., was the runner-up last week on the Fox TV singing competition. "Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino topped her by just 1.3 million votes out of more than 65 million votes cast.

Barrino, a 19-year-old from High Point, N.C., is working on her first single, which is due out June 15. She and DeGarmo both performed the song, titled "I Believe," during last week's finale.

Coming in second isn't so bad, last season's runner-up, Clay Aiken, went on to sell more than 2 million copies of his debut disc and enjoys just as much fame as the winner, Ruben Studdard.

Both singers and the other 10 "Idol" finalists will go on tour starting July 14 in Salt Lake City.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has overturned a civil judgment ordering rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to pay $450,000 to a man who claimed he was beaten by bodyguards the rapper had hired.

The ruling came Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Cedrick Bobby Lemon, who said he was beaten in June 1995 by bodyguards Combs hired to protect soul singer Mary J. Blige at a concert in Winston-Salem. Combs was Blige's manager.

Because Combs didn't respond to the complaint within the time required by law, a Forsyth County Superior Court judge ruled in Lemon's favor and ordered a default judgment against Combs. But the appeals court found that Lemon didn't meet other requirements when he requested the default judgment and overturned it.

According to Lemon's lawsuit, he worked as a limousine driver and wore an identification badge that permitted him to stand backstage.

As two bodyguards tried to clear the area to escort Blige from the coliseum after the concert, they punched Lemon in the head, kicked him in the back and broke his right ankle, according to the lawsuit.

Combs was negligent because he failed to train the bodyguards properly for their duties, the lawsuit said.

Lemon's attorney, Howard C. Jones, told the Winston-Salem Journal that his client hasn't decided whether to appeal the decision.