Record industry veteran LA Reid has formally responded to the sexual assault lawsuit filed against him last year by a former colleague from his time running Sony Music’s Arista Records.
In a new filing with the courts, Reid confirms that he “contests and denies” all of the allegations made by Drew Dixon in her lawsuit, which was filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. Though for now he mainly wants elements of that lawsuit to be dismissed, in part on the basis that some of the claims made in the litigation are barred by the statute of limitations.
The Adult Survivors Act was all about allowing new lawsuits to be filed in relation to sexual assault claims that would usually be barred by the statute of limitations because they happened too long ago. However, Dixon also accuses Reid of false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and those claims - the new legal filing argues - are not covered by the Adult Survivors Act and therefore the statute of limitations still applies.
Reid’s filing concedes that Dixon’s sexual abuse claims may be covered by the Adult Survivors Act, but then states: “Plaintiff is using those laws to springboard claims of career frustration and disappointment for which there are no timely or cognisable causes of action. In doing so, plaintiff takes inappropriate advantage of specially enacted laws as ‘catch-all’ alternatives for causes of action which cannot stand on their own and are too late to assert”.
In her lawsuit, Dixon claims that Reid sexually assaulted her twice in 2001 during her time working as an A&R at Arista. The first alleged assault occurred on a private plane on the way to a company retreat in Puerto Rico, the second in the back of a car in New York.
She says that she knew formally reporting the assaults within the record company at the time would be "career ending", so she simply sought to avoid Reid whenever possible. However, she alleges, he continued to harass her and, when she resisted his advances, started retaliating by de-prioritising her artists, ultimately leading to her quitting her major label job.
Reid had a long career in the major label system, ultimately ending up at Sony Music's Epic Records. However, he exited that role somewhat abruptly in 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment. He subsequently set up new music company HitCo, which he then sold to Concord in 2022.