Diddy has filed a motion for dismissal of a sexual assault lawsuit filed by an anonymous accuser, claiming that she filed the suit past the required timeline.
According to court documents obtained by HipHopDX, the embattled Bad Boy mogul, who “categorically den[ies]” the charges, argued 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. Because of that, the claim is that the accuser should have filed suit by August of 2021, according to analysis by the Associated Press.
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In lieu of an official statement, Diddy’s publicist pointed to the paragraph in the lawsuit that directly addresses the matter.
“At the top of Plaintiff’s pleading is a bolded, legally irrelevant ‘trigger warning’ calculated to focus attention on its salacious and depraved allegations,” it reads. “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.”
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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.”
In her suit, originally filed in late 2023, the woman claims that Diddy, then-Bad Boy president Harve Pierre, and a third man raped her after she was plied with drugs and alcohol. The alleged incident, she says, took place in 2003 when she was still in high school.
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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.”
Check out part of the filing below.
Diddy demands sexual assault lawsuit be dismissed because it was filed too late pic.twitter.com/nkSrgNE6UW
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) May 11, 2024
Last month, Diddy 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.
More 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.
Dickerson-Neal claims that the rapper and producer drugged and raped her in the early ’90s, while also filming the act.
He denied these allegations, saying through his spokesperson: “This last-minute lawsuit is an example of how a well-intentioned law [New York State’s Adult Survivors Act] can be turned on its head. Ms. Dickerson’s 32-year-old story is made up and not credible. Mr. Combs never assaulted her and she implicates companies that did not exist. This is purely a money grab and nothing more.”
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In February, a producer named Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones accused the New York City native (real name Sean Combs) of sexual harassment as well as drugging and threatening him over the course of a year.
