Madonna has lost a legal battle to prevent the auction of personal items including a lock of her hair, her underwear and a breakup letter from former boyfriend, the late rapper Tupac Shakur. 
 
 The singer won a temporary block of the auction of 22 pieces in July 2016, telling a New York City court that her celebrity status “does not obviate my right to maintain my privacy, including with regard to highly personal items�?. 
 
 In a decision made public yesterday, judge Gerald Lebovits ruled that she had misdirected her legal action by targeting Darlene Lutz, the New York art collector who helped Madonna build a collection before the pair fell out. 
 
 Lebovits sided with Lutz, who claimed that the pair’s disputes had been settled in a 2004 legal agreement. The judge questioned why Madonna had pursued Ms Lutz rather than her own assistants, who Madonna claimed gave her possessions to the dealer. Lutz’s lawyer, Judd Grossman, called the decision “a total win�?, saying: “Ms Lutz is now free to do with her property as she pleases without any continued interference by Madonna.�? 
 
 Madonna is yet to comment on the ruling. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I never meant to hurt you’ ... Madonna and Tupac in March 1994. Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty 
 
 Auction house Gotta Have Rock and Roll has said it would continue with the sale of the items in July. In a statement, the organisation said it had been confident about the case and undertaken “substantial due diligence�? before announcing the initial auction. 
 
 Madonna and Tupac began dating in 1994. In the handwritten letter included in the auction, obtained by TMZ and dated 15 January 1995, the rapper says that his image would suffer from him dating a white woman. He expressed his discomfort with an interview in which the musician said: “I’m off to rehabilitate all the rappers and basketball players.�? 
 
 Madonna and Grimes lay bare cost of creative freedom for female artists Read more 
 
 “Can u understand that?�? he wrote. “For you to be seen with a black man wouldn’t in any way jeopardise your career. If anything it would make you seem that much more open & exciting. But for me at least in my previous perception I felt due to my ‘image’ I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was. I never meant to hurt you.�? The rapper died in 1996, aged 25, in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. 
 
 The auction contains a second letter, sent from Madonna to “J�?, in which she describes Whitney Houston and Sharon Stone as “horribly mediocre�?. ||||| (NEW YORK) — An impending auction of pop star Madonna's personal items, including a love letter from her ex-boyfriend the late rapper Tupac Shakur, a pair of previously worn panties and a hairbrush containing her hair, was halted by a judge on Tuesday. 
 
 Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Gerald Leibovitz ordered Gotta Have It! Collectibles to pull 22 items from its rock-and-roll-themed auction scheduled for Wednesday. 
 
 The Material Girl had earlier sought an emergency court order saying she was "shocked to learn" of the planned online auction of the Tupac letter and had no idea it was no longer in her possession. 
 
 "The fact that I have attained celebrity status as a result of success in my career does not obviate my right to maintain my privacy, including with regard to highly personal items," Madonna said in court papers. "I understand that my DNA could be extracted from a piece of my hair. It is outrageous and grossly offensive that my DNA could be auctioned for sale to the general public." 
 
 Court papers said the Tupac letter was expected to fetch up to $400,000. Tupac, one of the best-selling rappers of all time, dated Madonna in the early 1990s and died of injuries suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996. 
 
 Madonna, behind such hit songs as "Like a Virgin" and "Vogue," has sold hundreds of millions of albums. Other Madonna items scheduled to be auctioned were private photographs taken at a bachelorette party at her Miami home, personal letters and cassette tapes of unreleased recordings. 
 
 Madonna's court papers name Darlene Lutz, a former friend, art consultant and "frequent overnight guest" in Madonna's home when she was "not in residence," as behind the sale of the property. 
 
 A spokesman for Lutz and the auction house said the allegations will be "vigorously challenged and refuted" in court. 
 
 "Madonna and her legal army have taken what we believe to be completely baseless and meritless action to temporarily halt the sale of Ms. Lutz's legal property," spokesman Pete Siegel told the New York Post. "We are confident that the Madonna memorabilia will be back." ||||| (Reuters) - Madonna attempted on Tuesday to stop an upcoming auction of a prison break-up letter from rapper Tupac Shakur and a note in which she called singer Whitney Houston and actress Sharon Stone “horribly mediocre.” 
 
 The “Rebel Heart” singer filed a request in New York Supreme Court for a temporary restraining order against New York auction house Gotta Have It Collectibles to halt the sale, due to start on Wednesday. 
 
 Madonna said in court documents that she was not aware until reading press reports that many of the items listed for auction, including the letter from her former boyfriend Shakur, were no longer in her possession. 
 
 The items were consigned to auction by Darlene Lutz, whom Madonna described in court documents as a former friend and art consultant and said she had “betrayed my trust in an outrageous effort to obtain my possessions without my knowledge or consent.” 
 
 A representative for the auction house and Lutz said in an emailed statement that Madonna’s effort to stop the sale was “a completely baseless and meritless action,” and they would challenge her claims in court. 
 
 “We believe that her intent is nothing more than to besmirch the good reputations of the auction house and Ms Lutz,” the statement said. 
 
 In a letter dated January 1995 and written to Madonna by Shakur while he was in prison for sexual assault, the rapper said he ended their romance because he felt that dating a white woman could jeopardize his career. 
 
 “I felt due to my ‘image’ I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was. I never meant to hurt you,” he said. Shakur was killed at age 25 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996. 
 
 Also among the 20 items Madonna is seeking to remove from sale are a pair of her panties, an old checkbook, a hairbrush and personal photos. 
 
 In another letter from the early 1990s, Madonna voiced her frustration at not having a music career like Houston or film career like Stone. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Singer Madonna arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gala, Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between in New York City, U.S. on May 1, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo 
 
 “Not because I want to be these women - because I’d rather die, but they’re so horribly mediocre and they’re always being held up as paragons of virtue (or) some sort of measuring stick to humiliate me,” she said in the letter. 
 
 Houston drowned in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub in 2012. 
 
 Stone said in a Facebook post last week that she is friends with Madonna, adding: “I love and adore you; won’t be pitted against you by any invasion of our personal journeys.”
– Bad news for Madonna: A judge on Monday said a New York auction house can go ahead and sell some of her personal stuff. Gotta Have Rock and Roll auctions got a hold of a pair of the singer's underwear, a letter Tupac Shakur wrote to her explaining why they had to break up, and other items of hers including a hairbrush, a checkbook, cassette tapes of unreleased recordings, a letter she wrote calling Whitney Houston and Sharon Stone "horribly mediocre," and photos. Madonna had obtained a temporary restraining order last year to halt the sale, saying she didn't know the items were no longer in her possession and believes someone took them from her home. But on Monday, a Manhattan judge ruled that the items belong to the auction house and the sale can go ahead, NBC News reports. The auction house says the sale will proceed in July. The Guardian and the New York Times explain that the judge found Madonna had targeted the wrong person in her legal action: Darlene Lutz, an art collector who helped Madonna build her collection before the two had a falling-out. Madonna claimed her assistants had given her things to Lutz, and the judge said Madonna should have targeted those assistants rather than Lutz. (Lutz herself once said that's how she came into the items, simply by collecting things that were otherwise going to be thrown out: "I knew all of the assistants and stuff would get thrown in boxes and they would just go, 'Hey, here’s some more.'") Lutz said she and the Material Girl had settled their disagreements in a 2004 legal agreement, and the judge sided with Lutz and found that that agreement prevented Madonna from suing. The judge also found that the statute of limitations to recover the items had passed. "Ms. Lutz is now free to do with her property as she pleases without any continued interference by Madonna," said Lutz's lawyer.