defamation lawsuit

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Russell Simmons was served with papers related to a defamation lawsuit against him at a resort in Bali earlier this month.
Rap mogul Russell Simmons was “caught off guard” as he was reportedly served with papers connected to a defamation lawsuit filed by former Def Jam executive Drew Dixon at a resort earlier this month. According to reports, the process server, Daniel John Ayoub arrived at the Gdas Bali Health & Wellness Spa in Bali, Indonesia, on March 5 at 12:30 p.m. local time and managed to gain entry to a VIP area through two security checkpoints.

He sat in the restaurant area and was about to leave when Simmons arrived and sat with a group. Ayoub is quoted as saying he waited before serving Simmons, and informed him that the source of the papers were “from the State of New York.” Simmons is then quoted as responding “Ah s—t! F—!” before dropping the papers to the ground.
Ayoub then goes on record saying that he overheard Simmons calling someone on the phone, audibly flustered. “South African guy just handed me an envelope. And he’s with a big Black guy,” he said. “Should I open the doc now, or wait till later? How did these people get in here?” The server then exited the resort, which Simmons notably is a founder and investor of. Representatives for Simmons and Dixon had no comment when contacted by the press about the matter.
The defamation lawsuit was brought against Simmons in February by Dixon, a veteran music industry executive who also worked at Def Jam and alleges that he sexually assaulted her while working at the label. Dixon first made the claims while appearing in the On The Record documentary in 2020. She sued Simmons after comments that he made during a December 2023 appearance on the In Depth with Graham Besinger podcast about the allegations, which according to the documents of the lawsuit “continued a concerted and malicious campaign to discredit Ms. Dixon and to so damage her reputation that Ms. Dixon’s factual reporting of what he did to her would not be credited.”
Simmons is also facing another lawsuit filed in a New York federal court from a victim referred to as Jane Doe in February, who claims that her career and life were “disrupted and derailed by a devastating experience at the hands of Simmons in addition to false imprisonment, battery and causing emotional distress.

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Drew Dixon, a former Def Jam executive, is suing Russell Simmons for defamation related to remarks he made on a podcast.
Two days after being hit with a lawsuit alleging sexual assault, Russell Simmons is being sued again – this time by Drew Dixon, a former A&R  executive at Def Jam Records. The suit, which was filed in New York City on Thursday (February 15), contends that Simmons made comments in a  “concerted and malicious campaign to discredit” Dixon to discount her previous allegations of him committing sexual assault against her. The comments come from an interview of Simmons on the In Depth With Graham Besinger podcast last December where he claimed there were different definitions of rape and harassment, saying:  “Yeah, [rape is] a serious word, but I think they’ve changed the meaning.”

The legal filing says that the Def Jam Records co-founder “has gone on a concerted and malicious campaign to discredit Ms. Dixon and to so damage her reputation” to the point where Dixon’s previous allegations wouldn’t be seen as credible. “He has continued in his campaign to discredit Ms. Dixon, referring to the ‘main accuser’ from On the Record and calling her a liar for making the account of the assault public—defamation that started in December 2019 has continued until today,” Kenya Davis, a lawyer representing Dixon, wrote in the suit. Dixon was one of the main subjects of the documentary. Simmons would claim that Winfrey pulled her name from the documentary at his request. “This defamation has reached all the way up the ladder to the pinnacle of the leadership circle, not only including Ms. Winfrey, but other founding board members of Time’s Up, including some of our nation’s most powerful women spanning industries from business to politics to entertainment,” Davis also wrote. The lawsuit is seeking punitive and compensatory damages.
Drew Dixon, who had worked at Def Jam from 1993 until 1995, first came forward with her claim of Simmons assaulting her along with two other women to the New York Times in 2017. She alleges that she constantly fought off Simmons’ aggressive sexual advances while at Def Jam which led to him pinning her to a bed in his apartment in 1995 and sexually assaulting her. Simmons has disputed those claims. 20 women in total have since come forward to accuse the 66-year-old of sexual misconduct.