Jay-Z has sued the woman who accused him of rape for defamation, claiming that she and her lawyers were “soullessly motivated by greed, in abject disregard of the truth and the most fundamental precepts of human decency” when they added the rapper as a co-defendant on a Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs sexual assault lawsuit.
The unnamed woman, listed as Jane Doe on her lawsuit, claimed that both Combs and Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, raped her when she was just thirteen years old at an MTV VMAs after show party in 2000. However, says Carter’s new defamation lawsuit, filed in Alabama, that claim was not only “false” and “malicious”, but also “strategically and tactically calculated and timed to inflict maximum pain and suffering on Mr Carter”.
Carter is already embroiled in a legal battle with his accuser’s main lawyer Tony Buzbee, who is a co-defendant on the new defamation lawsuit. Responding to the defamation action, Buzbee told the Daily Mail that the new lawsuit, like Carter’s previous filings against him, “has no legal merit”.
“Shawn Carter’s investigators have repeatedly harassed, threatened and harangued this poor woman for weeks trying to intimidate her and make her recant her story”, Buzbee added. “She hasn’t and won’t - instead she has stated repeatedly she stands by her claims”.
Buzbee is working on numerous lawsuits that accuse Combs of sexual assault, having set up a toll-free 1-800 phone line for anyone with allegations against the musician. His law firm recently said that it now has 150 clients making allegations against Combs.
Buzbee formally added Carter as a co-defendant on one of those lawsuits in December. Carter strongly denied the rape allegations, with his legal team arguing that his accuser’s claims “strain the outer bounds of credulity”, so much so Buzbee should never have filed the lawsuit.
Carter initially tried to have Buzbee formally sanctioned for not undertaking the necessary due diligence before adding the rapper as a co-defendant on the Diddy lawsuit. Although Carter’s team ultimately abandoned those efforts, they continued to push for the lawsuit against the rapper to be thrown out of court. Though in the end his accuser voluntarily dismissed her litigation.
When that happened last month, Carter said he was glad that the lawsuit had been dropped, but “the trauma that my wife, my children, my loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed”. Taking aim at Buzbee, he added, “This 1-800 lawyer gets to file a suit hiding behind Jane Doe, and when they quickly realise that the money grab is going to fail, they get to walk away with no repercussions”.
The defamation lawsuit provides a summary of previous criticisms made by Carter and his lawyers against Buzbee. That includes the allegation that Buzbee and his client initially tried to extort a settlement out of Carter, that Buzbee did little to scrutinise his client’s claims, and that an interview Carter’s accuser gave to NBC News exposed various flaws with her allegations against the rapper.
The lawsuit says that Carter did nothing to deserve the “depraved attack that Jane Doe, in conspiracy with her lawyers, launched to extort” him, beginning in November with “a menacing ‘private’ ‘demand letter’”.
When that letter didn’t result in Carter offering a financial settlement, it adds, Doe and Buzbee “brought before the world an in court complaint, the impossibility - and indeed absurdity - of which was surpassed only by its vile malevolence”.
They did that, it’s claimed, “in a desperate attempt to leverage Mr Carter into an extortionate payoff, which these malicious actors presented as the only path for Mr Carter to prevent the public prosecution of a lawsuit by Doe”.
Despite Buzbee insisting that his client stands by her allegations, even though she dismissed her lawsuit, Carter’s defamation action insists that is not true. Indeed, it claims that Buzbee’s client admitted to her lawyer that Carter had not sexually assaulted her before the rapper was even added as a co-defendant on the Diddy lawsuit.
And yet, “Buzbee went forward with naming Mr Carter, with full knowledge by him, as imparted to him by Doe, that Mr Carter had never assaulted Doe, and Doe’s entire story as it related to Mr Carter was completely fabricated”. Buzbee, Carter’s filing claims, pushed his client “to go forward with the false narrative of the assault by Mr Carter in order to leverage a maximum payday”.
And even though Carter’s accuser dismissed her lawsuit, it’s claimed that Buzbee’s misconduct continues. “Just last Friday”, the defamation claim states, “a prominent New York attorney” who was working with Buzbee on the now dismissed Diddy lawsuit “threatened Mr Carter’s counsel to double-down with yet another false public statement by Doe if Mr Carter publicly revealed her admissions, and Buzbee’s misdeeds” as part of legal action Carter is already pursuing against Buzbee in the Californian courts.
“Mr Carter does not commence this action lightly”, his new defamation action states. However, “the extortion and abuse of Mr Carter by Doe and her lawyers must stop”.
Which is why he wants to hold his accuser “accountable for her willful defamation” and for “her malicious prosecution of knowingly false allegations against Mr Carter that Doe and her co-conspirator attorneys have falsely and maliciously peddled”.
There have been other developments in the last week in relation to Jay-Z’s legal wrangling with Buzbee, and more generally regarding lawsuits being filed against Combs.
Roc Nation wants out from barratry lawsuit
Buzbee has accused Carter’s Roc Nation company and various lawyers that work for the rapper, including Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, of encouraging his ex-clients to sue for malpractice, even offering to finance any such litigation, in retaliation over Carter being added to the Diddy lawsuit.
One of those ex-clients declined to sue Buzbee, instead suing Roc Nation, Quinn Emanuel and others claiming he was “a target of barratry and a related civil conspiracy”. Barratry involves pursuing, or encouraging others to pursue, groundless litigation.
Roc Nation and Quinn Emanuel both deny those allegations. Last week Roc Nation tried to get itself removed from the lawsuit on jurisdiction grounds.
The lawsuit was filed in Texas, but Roc Nation is based in New York and incorporated in Delaware. Therefore, the company argues, the courts in Texas do not have jurisdiction.
Responding to Roc Nation’s motion for dismissal, Buzbee told Law360 that the misconduct alleged in the lawsuit happened in Texas, and that means the Texas courts do have jurisdiction. “They are grasping at straws in their efforts to get this dismissed”, he said, adding, “I expect we will prevail”.
Yet more lawsuits filed against Diddy
While the legal action that named Carter as a co-defendant has been dismissed, the lawsuits accusing Combs of sexual assault and other misconduct continue to mount up, with yet more litigation against the musician filed with the courts last week.
That included a lawsuit from Kirk Burrowes, co-founder and former President of Comb’s Bad Boy Entertainment. Earlier in the week Burrowes sued Combs’ mother Janice Smalls who, he claimed, colluded with her son to force him to sign over his 25% stake in the Bad Boy business in 1996.
Then on Friday Burrowes filed a lawsuit against Combs directly. According to People magazine, it accuses the musician of “repeated sexual harassment, physical aggression and forced compliance with degrading sexual acts” - including “unwanted sexual advances” such as “nudity, sexual overtones, voyeurism and acts of exhibitionism”, some of which took place during what were meant to be business meetings.
According to Vulture, ten more lawsuits were filed against Diddy last week ahead of a deadline set by New York City’s Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which allowed people to file new lawsuits relating to alleged incidents of sexual assault that would usually be barred by the statute of limitations. The deadline for filing lawsuits under the act was Saturday.
The Gender-Motivated Violence Act was similar to New York state’s Adult Survivors Act, which prompted the initial lawsuits against Combs, including the one filed by his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
Combs is now battling dozens of lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault. Vulture’s report summarises 55 lawsuits, the vast majority of which are ongoing. Combs, of course, denies all the allegations against him, in all the civil lawsuits and the separate criminal proceedings, in which he is accused of racketeering and sex trafficking.