Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team is pushing back against his accusers in their civil lawsuits as a federal investigation into sex trafficking continues.
Her lawyers are asking a New York court to dismiss parts of a sexual assault lawsuit filed by Joi Dickerson-Neal's lawyers, accusing the rapper of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1991, when she was 19 years old. The lawsuit alleges that the assault was recorded and the video was shared with Combs' friends.
The attorneys seek to undermine the entire merits of the lawsuit and ask that certain allegations, including those of revenge porn and human trafficking, be dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought again.
Combs, they argued, cannot be sued in this case because New York's relevant laws regarding revenge porn and human trafficking did not go into effect until decades after the alleged incident. The revenge porn law was enacted in 2019, while the trafficking law came into effect in 2007.
The filing comes on the heels of heavily armed Department of Homeland Security agents storming Combs' mansions in Holmby Hills and Miami on March 25 with search warrants and seizing documents and electronic devices as part of a targeted sex trafficking investigation. by prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, according to law enforcement sources.
In a motion filed Friday to dismiss large portions of the Dickerson-Neal lawsuit, Combs' attorneys called her allegations “false, offensive and lascivious” and said they “vehemently deny substantially all of the allegations allegedly alleged.” The attorneys also sought to strike out portions of the lawsuit that targeted Combs' corporations because “the corporate defendants did not exist at the time of the alleged conduct.”
According to the lawsuit, Dickerson-Neal, then a student at Syracuse University, met Combs during a break and “reluctantly agreed” to have dinner with him at a Harlem restaurant, saying he “pressured” her to keep him company afterward. of the food.
The lawsuit, filed in November, alleges that Combs gave the woman drugs that put her in a “physical state in which she was unable to stand or walk independently.” When the two arrived at a music studio, she was unable to exit the vehicle, according to the lawsuit. Then she “went to a place where she was staying to sexually assault her,” the file states.
Dickerson-Neal She is one of several women, including Combs' longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who have filed explosive lawsuits accusing the artist of sexually and physically abusing them. Combs has since settled Ventura's lawsuit.
All claims were filed under the Adult Survivors Acta law that went into effect in November 2022 in New York that gives people who believe they have been sexually assaulted a one-year period during which they can sue their abusers, even if the statute of limitations for prosecuting the alleged underlying crimes would have expired.
In February, the producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones filed a lawsuit alleging that Combs sexually assaulted and harassed him and that several people in his circle engaged in unlawful conduct.
In response to the growing litigation, Combs wrote on Instagram: “Enough is enough. For the past two weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. People looking for a quick payday have made disgusting accusations against me. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the horrible things that are alleged. “I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”
His lead attorney, Aaron Dyer, called the federal raids “an unprecedented ambush” and said, “No criminal or civil liability has been found in any of these allegations.”
“Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every day to clear his name,” Dyer said after the search warrants were served.
