Jay-Z has filed a new motion to dismiss a woman's lawsuit who claims Sean “Diddy” Combs and the Roc Nation mogul sexually assaulted her when she was 13 at a VMA afterparty in 2000.
The rapper, whose real name is Shawn Carter, made his latest request Wednesday for the judge to dismiss the case, pointing to what they say are impossibilities and inconsistencies in the woman's account. Carter's lawyers relied heavily on an interview the accuser gave to NBC News last December, in which she admitted she had “made some mistakes” in some aspects of her story.
Carter's lawyers are also asking that District Judge Analisa Torres impose a financial penalty on the woman's attorney, Tony Buzbee, arguing that he did not adequately vet the woman's story before filing the highly explosive case.
“Signing a brief accusing someone of such a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegations – particularly when the defendant's prominence means the allegations will be repeated in headlines around the world – is deeply wrong and unethical,” he said. argued Carter's attorney, Alex Spiro, in court documents obtained by Rolling Stone. “If lawyers face no consequences for such a callous attempt to destroy another person's reputation and inflict emotional harm on their loved ones, this tactic will proliferate.”
In a statement to Rolling Stoneattorney Buzbee said he will not be “bullied or intimidated” by Carter and his team. «Mr. Spiro and his firm are paid by the hour. So they deposit a lot of rubbish at the Court,” he said. «With these frenetic deposits, your team shows a certain desperation. He and his team think the laws and rules don't apply to them. They are very wrong. They also think they can bully or intimidate the victims' lawyers by presenting useless documents, full of lies and half-truths. Again, they are very wrong… We will address the sheer lack of merit with its filing with the Court, rather than with the press.”
The dismissal follows Carter's adamant denials and escalating war against Buzbee, who claims to represent more than 120 clients who want to file lawsuits against Combs. Carter said he would defend himself vigorously against an “idiotic” attempt at blackmail. “I will not give you a cent,” he wrote in a statement. (Combs' representatives have previously denied the woman's allegations.).
The accuser, who filed the original complaint in October and amended it in December to also name Carter, said she found her way to Combs' exclusive afterparty after trying to get into the Video Music Awards MTV in 2000. While waiting outside the venue, the stranger, now 38 and living in Alabama, said she met a driver who told her he worked for Combs, who took her to the afterparty at the founder of Bad Boy Entertainment a few hours later.
Upon arriving at the party, the woman said she had to sign a document she believed to be a non-disclosure agreement. He allegedly accepted a drink from a waitress and began mingling with other guests, including musician Benji Madden.
Shortly after taking a sip of her drink, the woman said she began to feel dizzy and slipped into a bedroom to rest. Combs, Carter and an unnamed female celebrity entered the room shortly thereafter, according to the complaint. Combs “aggressively approached Plaintiff with a crazed look on his face, grabbed her and said, 'You're ready to party!'” the complaint states. The men allegedly took turns assaulting the stranger while the female celebrity watched.
The alleged encounter ended when the woman punched Combs in the neck and fled the home. The woman said she ran to a nearby gas station and called her father to come pick her up.
The woman's story began to come into question when the father told NBC he didn't remember ever picking her up, saying a 10-hour round trip to pick up his teenage daughter would be hard to forget. A representative for Madden also said he was on tour with his band Good Charlotte in Chicago at the time. “I made mistakes,” the woman told NBC in a later interview. “I may have made a mistake in identification.”
Carter's lawyers included a copy of the NBC interview in court documents, citing the inconsistencies as justification for dismissing the lawsuit and sanctioning Buzbee. They also pointed out other alleged impossibilities in the woman's story, including that she watched the awards show on a big screen or that Combs owned a house with a “U-shaped driveway” about 20 minutes from Midtown Manhattan.
«The fact that almost all the passages of the plaintiff's narrative – from her arrival at the VMAs to her interactions with the limousine driver and with the celebrities up to the trip with her father – turn out to be false or highly improbable, casts strong doubt on the plaintiff's claim that Mr. Carter raped her, which did not occur,” Jay Z's lawyers write.
However, the woman said she was convinced by his claims. “Honestly, the clearest thing is what happened to me and the road that got me there,” he said.
From Rolling Stone US.
