By Bernadette Giacomazzo
Published on: May 11, 2024, 10:30 AM PDT
Diddy, the embattled Bad Boy mogul, has filed a motion for the dismissal of a sexual assault lawsuit filed by an anonymous accuser. The claim centers around the timing of the lawsuit, with Diddy arguing that it was filed past the required timeline.
According to court documents obtained by HipHopDX, Diddy categorically denies the charges and contends that the “claim-revival” provision of the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law (VGM), a New York City law, is preempted by the Adult Survivors Act and Child Victim’s Act, a state law. The analysis by the Associated Press suggests that the accuser should have filed suit by August of 2021.
Diddy’s publicist responded to the lawsuit by pointing to a specific paragraph within it. The statement reads, “At the top of Plaintiff’s pleading is a bolded, legally irrelevant ‘trigger warning’ calculated to focus attention on its salacious and depraved allegations. This stunt is intended to prominently showcase a baseless and time-barred claim, which was designed to cause the Combs Defendants unwanted publicity, embarrassment, and financial costs, so Plaintiff could extract an undeserved financial recovery from them.”
The statement continues: “Mr. Combs and his companies categorically deny Plaintiff’s decades-old tale against them, which has already caused incalculable damage to the reputations and business standing of the Combs Defendants, even before any evidence has been presented. Plaintiff cannot allege what day or time of year the alleged incident occurred, yet purports to miraculously recall the most prurient details with specificity… This case should be dismissed now, with prejudice, to protect the Combs Defendants from further reputational injury and before more party and judicial resources are squandered.”
The lawsuit, originally filed in late 2023, alleges that Diddy, then-Bad Boy president Harve Pierre, and a third man raped the woman after she was plied with drugs and alcohol. The incident is said to have occurred in 2003 when she was still in high school.
One of the woman’s attorneys responded to Diddy’s filing by saying, “At this point, no one should take anything ‘Diddy’ or his lawyers say seriously. Today’s motion is just a desperate attempt by Combs to avoid accountability for Ms. Doe’s allegations of gang rape and sexual assault. It won’t work.”
Last month, Diddy also argued that a different lawsuit against him should be dismissed because he couldn’t be sued for breaking laws that didn’t exist at the time. Specifically, the motion stated that at the time of the alleged attack on Joi Dickerson-Neal in 1991, some statutes that she cites in her suit, including those around revenge porn and human trafficking, weren’t yet on the books.
Russell Simmons, despite sexual assault allegations, has defended Diddy, urging people to “see the good in things.”
!Diddy demands sexual assault lawsuit be dismissed because it was filed too late
Source: HipHopDX
