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Artist News Business News Legal
Kesha’s mother drops lawsuit against Dr Luke
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 28 April 2016
There’s been a further development in the ongoing legal battle between Kesha and Dr Luke. The singer’s mother has dismissed her legal action against the producer in the state of Tennessee.
As previously reported, there are various elements to the Kesha v Dr Luke litigation, with lawsuits filed in three states. Kesha Sebert accuses her long-time musical collaborator Lukasz Gottwald of plying her with drugs and alcohol and raping her as a teenager. He denies all of those allegations, and has sued both the singer and her mother for defamation, saying that the accusations were invented in a bid to force his hand in a contractual dispute.
The latest development relates to Gottwald’s litigation against Kesha’s mother Pebe. Earlier this year, the New York courts dismissed one of the producer’s lawsuits against Sebert Senior, but mainly on a jurisdiction point, because the latter successfully argued that the events covered by the action didn’t take place in New York State. That dismissal didn’t affect the separate legal action between Gottwald and Pebe Sebert in Tennessee.
In the latter case, Sebert countersued. Gottwald accused Kesha’s mother of defamation and tortious interference, while she accused him of intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, misrepresentations and fraudulent inducement.
Pebe Sebert has now voluntarily dismissed that countersuit. The move follows an earlier decision to part ways with Mark Geragos, the celebrity lawyer who has been leading on her daughter’s legal case of late. A legal representative for Gottwald said that “Pebe Sebert’s voluntary withdrawal of all her claims against Dr Luke is her acknowledgement that her claims are meritless”.
Various other strands of the Kesha v Dr Luke case continue, with a currently frozen case in California still having the potential to become the forum where the various allegations made by both parties are properly scrutinised in court.
