Legal professionals for Sean Combs filed court docket papers on Monday in search of to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by a music producer who accused Mr. Combs of undesirable sexual contact, saying the lawsuit was baseless and “crammed with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”
The submitting in Federal District Court docket in Manhattan is the most recent effort by the hip-hop impresario’s authorized workforce to dismiss a collection of current lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault and misconduct. The costume by Rodney Jones Jra music producer who labored on Mr. Combs’ newest album accuses Mr. Combs of groping him and forcing him to hunt out prostitutes; he additionally claimed that Mr. Combs had threatened him with violence.
Of their response, Mr. Combs’ legal professionals wrote that Mr. Jones’ allegations lacked key particulars, together with the place and when the alleged groping came about, together with precisely how Mr. Combs pressured him to rent prostitutes.
“Such imprecise allegations don’t meet federal pleading requirements,” wrote one of many legal professionals, Erica A. Wolff, who argued that the true function of the lawsuit was “to generate media hype and use it to achieve a settlement.”
One of many threats of violence alleged within the lawsuit is that Mr. Combs as soon as threatened to “eat Mr. Jones’s face off,” however the precise context of the remark is unclear in Mr. Jones’ swimsuit, a doc of 98 pages, which particulars quite a few allegations from his time as a part of Mr. Combs’ entourage.
Mr. Jones’ lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, known as the applying “a determined bid for a wholesome Maria.”
“Nothing on this criticism is far-fetched,” he stated. “Nothing on this criticism is just too imprecise.”
What adopted was a cascade of lawsuits filed towards Mr Combs, the hip-hop mogul generally known as Puff Daddy and Diddy a lawsuit from his ex-girlfriendCassandra Ventura, who accused him of years of bodily and sexual abuse. This case was established in one day, however within the following months Mr Combs was sued by 5 different ladies who accused him of sexually abusing them within the Nineties and early 2000s.
Mr. Combs’ authorized workforce has fought these instances in federal and state court docket, and he has denied the allegations. One of many instances was filed anonymously by a girl who the accused Mr. Combs and two other men about gang-raping her when she was 17. A choose is at the moment contemplating whether or not to permit the case to proceed in gentle of authorized objections from Mr. Combs; in a victory for his workforce, the choose dominated that if the case continued, the plaintiff must reveal his title.
The authorized spin on the lawsuits is separate from the continued federal investigation into Mr. Combs’ conduct, which grew to become public in March when federal brokers broke into his homes in Los Angeles and Miami Seaside, Florida.
In court docket paperwork, Mr. Combs’ legal professionals raised questions in regards to the conduct of Mr. Blackburn, who represents Mr. Jones and different plaintiffs. They pointed to feedback from a federal choose in a separate case who wrote in an order this 12 months that Mr. Blackburn had a sample of improperly submitting instances in federal court docket to “seize media consideration, embarrass defendants with salacious allegations and places strain on defendants to settle rapidly.” Mr. Blackburn objected to the choose’s evaluation and took the case to state court docket, the place it’s pending.
Mr. Blackburn additionally sued Mr. Combs once more, altering venue from New York to New Jersey as a result of, he wrote in a court docket submitting, he and his shopper acquired new data indicating that she was initially confused in regards to the location of the alleged 1990 Encounter. The plaintiff, a girl named Lisa Gardner, accused Mr. Combs of forcing her to have intercourse and later choking her so onerous she handed out; Mr. Combs denied the allegations via a lawyer.
