Notorious BIG was murdered in Los Angeles in 1997

His family tried to sue the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for wrongful death earlier this year.

But the hearing was declared a mistrial in July after the judge expressed concerns LAPD had withheld evidence.

She ordered the city to pay "fees and costs incurred as a result of defendants' misconduct".

Notorious BIG - whose real name was Christopher Wallace - was killed on a street in Los Angeles in March 1997, after seven shots were fired into his vehicle.

Police closed an investigation into his death earlier this year, saying there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

Concealed documents

The civil trial began on 21 June but the jury only heard three days of evidence.

In June 2003, lawyers acting for the city of Los Angeles said they had provided all internal documents related to the case - which had accused a corrupt police officer of arranging the chart-topping New York rapper's murder.

But new evidence was uncovered from police files in 2004 and again during the brief civil trial in June this year.

The documents uncovered during the civil trial detail Detective Steven Katz's investigation of a prison informant's claim that former LAPD officers Rafael Perez and David Mack were involved in killing the 24-year-old rapper.

This led US judge Florence-Marie Cooper to state that a police detective had intentionally concealed the documents and declare a mistrial last month.

Fees and expenses

US District Court motions request that the city of Los Angeles pay the rapper's family approximately $1.6m (�884,000) in lawyers' fees and a further $500,000 (�276,000) for travel and other expenses, lawyer Perry Sanders said on Tuesday.

He said they arrived at the figure after "conservatively [going] back to the date where they made their disclosures on the record, saying that they had given us every little thing".

"We didn't really start running any lead that we had down until they said we had what they represented to be the entire case file," he added.

Assistant City Attorney Don Vincent said he had not yet seen the motions, but his immediate reaction was that $2.1m seemed excessive.

"They have to really justify it well. I don't know what their logic is or anything," he added.