Lawsuit
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Bun B has the hottest thing coming out of Houston since “Still Tippin’” in his wildly popular Trill Burgers. But now, it seems like Bun B’s baby is at the center of a court case with several allegations being thrown around.
According to Chron, Bun B and his ex-associates and co-founders of Trill Burgers, Patsy, and Benson Vivares, are duking it out in a court of law as both sides are accusing each other of theft.
In 2023 Bun B, Andy Nguyen, and Nick Scurfield filed a lawsuit against the Vivares brothers alleging that the two had stolen $45,000 from the company’s coffers. Turning the tables on Bun B and company, Patsy, and Benson filed a counter lawsuit in which they claim that Bun B, Nguyen, and Scurfield not only stole their smash burger idea but also the original recipe, which led to Trill Burgers being crowned the best burger in America.
Represented by Saad Aziz and Walter “Web” Beard of Aziz and Beard Trial Law, the Vivareses are claiming that they linked up with Andy Nguyen in 2021 when they were looking for a new menu item to add to their Sticky’s Chicken restaurant menu.
Chron reports:
“[The Vivareses] spent a lot of time and energy developing the recipe,” Aziz said. “They are the ones who kind of came up with the specifics of the smashburger … now called the OG Trill Burger.”
According to the counterclaims made by the Vivareses, the siblings and Nguyen in July 2021 connected and partnered with Bun B, who had known Nguyen since 2010 and was said to be a fan of Sticky’s Chicken. At the time, Bun B was approached by the Vivareses through a meeting facilitated by Nguyen and Nick Scurfield, founder of the public relations firm Scurfield Group who at the time listed Sticky’s Chicken as a client. According to court documents, the initial meeting was set up to test the rapper’s interest in “being involved with the promotion” of the burger.
A partnership over the smashburger concept was confirmed on July 22, with each partner assuming a percentage of ownership, according to court documents. An email sent to each partner outlined the partnership, indicating that the Vivareses and Nguyen together would retain a 50 percent share, Bun B would have 40 percent, and Scurfield would retain the remaining 10 percent. It is unclear how ownership was split between Nguyen and the Vivareses, though court documents claim that the Vivareses are entitled to 33.4 percent. By Jan. 4 , 2022, a limited liability company was established for Trill Burgers.
Damn! We thought this was Bun B’s secret recipe, but the Vivares are claiming that it’s theirs. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court and who came up with the recipe that put Trill Burgers on the map.
Still, the Trill Burger made its debut in February of 2022 at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and was a massive hit. The Vivares brothers ran the pop-up themselves and cooked thousands of burgers that day bringing in quite the haul.
As for the $45,000 that Bun B’s team claimed was stolen by the Vivareses, the brothers admitted in texts to “misappropriating” the money but said that all the partners were aware that they would use the profits from the pop-up to pay off Sticky’s mounting debts.
The Vivareses are seeking $1 million from Bun B, Scurfield, Nguyen, and Trill Burgers, LLC, saying they not only stole their recipe for Trill Burgers but also poached their chef, Mike Pham, in the process.
What do y’all think of the drama surrounding Trill Burgers? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Photo: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images / Getty
Six months after Sam Smith and Normani beat a copyright lawsuit over their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger,” a federal judge is refusing to force their accuser to reimburse their legal fees — a bill the stars say exceeded $700,000.
Smith and Normani have argued that they shouldn’t be forced to foot the huge bill they incurred fending off the “frivolous and unreasonable” lawsuit, which claimed the duo had copied a little-known 2015 song of the same name when they created “Dancing.”
While U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu dismissed the lawsuit last year, he ruled Monday (Mar. 18) that the case was not so completely baseless as to warrant punishing the accuser with paying the stars’ massive legal bill.
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“Plaintiff’s claims were neither frivolous nor objectively unreasonable,” the judge wrote, calling the lawsuit a “close and difficult case” on a “contentious area of copyright law.”
Attorneys for Smith and Normani had argued that the lawsuit was merely a “gamble,” filed against the stars with “hopes for a massive payout.” But Judge Hsu said Monday there was “no evidence” of such ill intent by the accusers.
The case was filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who claimed that “Dancing” was “strikingly similar” to their 2015 same-named track. In their complaint, they said it was “beyond any real doubt” that the song had been copied.
But in September, Judge Hsu said it was, in fact, very much in doubt. Granting Smith and Normani’s motion for an immediate ruling ending the lawsuit, the judge said the songs simply were not similar — and he criticized the plaintiffs for manipulating them to make them appear more alike.
“Permitting copyright plaintiffs to prevail … by rotating chords, recalibrating the tempo, and altering the pitch of a defendant’s song so that it sounds more similar to the plaintiffs’ would lead courts to deem substantially similar two vastly dissimilar musical compositions,” the judge wrote at the time.
Unlike most forms of American litigation, winners in copyright lawsuits are often able to legally recover the money they spent on lawyers fighting the case. Judges grant such requests in cases where a lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed or was litigated too aggressively, and fee awards can serve as a powerful deterrent against future questionable lawsuits.
In an October motion seeking $732,202 in fees, attorneys for Smith and Normani argued that Vincent, Miranda and Banlaoi’s case had been exactly the kind of pointless lawsuit that needs to be deterred. They argued that the songwriters and their lawyers had used aggressive tactics to advance faulty copyright claims that would be bad for all musicians.
“Plaintiff sought to monopolize unprotectable elements that are common property to all,” Smith and Normani’s lawyers wrote at the time. “Claims like Plaintiff’s here threaten to cheat the public domain and curtail the creation of new works.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Hsu was not persuaded. He called Smith and Normani’s arguments “generic reasoning” that would lead to many such awards in future copyright lawsuits.
“Yes, Plaintiff’s counsel aggressively litigated the case,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff’s conduct in this litigation does not rise to the level that calls for deterrence.”
Judge Hsu did rule that Smith and Normani could recover their legal “costs” from the plaintiffs, but such awards are typically far smaller than awards of attorney’s fees. In earlier court filings, attorneys for Smith and Normani calculated such costs at $10,173.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday (Mar. 19).
Jimmie Allen‘s former manager has agreed to dismiss her lawsuit claiming the country singer sexually assaulted her, ending the case less than a year after it was filed.
In court papers filed Thursday (Mar. 14), attorneys for Allen and his unnamed Jane Doe accuser — his former day-to-day manager — jointly asked a federal judge to dismiss her claims against the country singer. In the same filing, Allen also agreed to drop his counter-suit accusing the woman of defamation.
Jane Doe’s attorney, Beth Fegan at the law firm FeganScott, confirmed the agreement to Billboard: “FeganScott can confirm that Jane Doe and Jimmie Allen have reached a mutual accord as to Plaintiff’s claims and Mr. Allen’s counterclaims and have agreed to dismiss them The decision reflects only that both parties desire to move past litigation.”
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A rep for Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Though the claims against Allen will be dropped, the case will continue against management firm Wide Open Music, where the Jane Doe plaintiff was employed, and its founder, Ash Bowers. In her lawsuit, the accuser says Wide Open and Bowers didn’t do enough to protect their employee from Allen’s abusive behavior and fired her when she complained about it.
The agreement also won’t fully end Allen’s legal woes. The country star will continue to face a second lawsuit, filed by another Jane Doe, who claims that the singer assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room and secretly recorded it. That case remains pending.
Allen was a rising star in the country music world at the start of last year, but in May and June he was hit with the pair of sexual abuse lawsuits in quick succession. Following the accusations, his label, booking agency, former publicist and management company all suspended or dropped him.
The first case, filed on May 11, alleged that Allen had “manipulated and used his power” over the woman on his management team to “sexually harass and abuse her” over a period of 18 months that elapsed from 2020 to 2022.
“Plaintiff expressed in words and actions that Jimmie Allen’s conduct was unwelcome, including pushing him away, sitting where he could not reach her, telling him she was uncomfortable and no, and crying uncontrollably,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “However, Allen made clear that plaintiff’s job was dependent on her staying silent about his conduct.”
The second lawsuit, filed on June 9, accused Allen of battery, assault and other wrongdoing over an alleged July 2022 incident at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. Though the Jane Doe in that case says she had “willingly joined Allen in the bedroom,” she claimed she had “repeatedly told him she did not want him to ejaculate inside her” because she was not on birth control, but that Allen had done so anyway. She also claimed that he had secretly filmed the encounter on his phone despite the fact that she had “not consented to being recorded”
Allen strongly denied all the accusations, saying he would “mount a vigorous defense.” He later counter-sued both women — accusing the management employee of defaming him and claiming that the other woman had stolen the phone he allegedly used to record her.
Attorneys for Linkin Park are pushing to end a lawsuit that accuses the band of refusing to pay royalties to an ex-bassist who briefly played with the band in the late 1990s, saying such claims have been repudiated for “over two decades.”
In a motion to dismiss the case filed Tuesday (Mar. 5), lawyers for Mike Shinoda and other Linkin Park members say Kyle Christner’s lawsuit is “rife with defects.” Among them, they say, is that the statute of limitations on such claims has “long since passed.”
“Plaintiff claims that defendants … owe him money because he was a member of the band for, at most, eight months, 25 years ago, and was not paid for his ‘contributions’,” writes the band’s lead counsel, prominent music litigator Edwin F. McPherson. “He asserts three claims, each of which fails.”
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Christner sued Linkin Park in November, claiming he had been a member of the band for several months in 1999 until he was “abruptly informed” that he had been fired shortly before the band signed a record deal with Warner Records. He accused the band of continuing to profit from songs he helped create, while effectively erasing his involvement.
“Christner has never been paid a penny for his work with Linkin Park, nor has he been properly credited, even as defendants have benefitted from his creative efforts,” his lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
In addition to Shinoda, the lawsuit also named Linkin Park’s other living members (Rob Bourdon, Brad Delson and Joseph Hahn), as well as its business entity, Machine Shop Entertainment, and the band’s label, Warner Records.
The dispute was seemingly triggered by an anniversary re-release of the band’s smash hit 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory, which holds the lofty distinction of being the best-selling rock album of the 21st century. Christener claims the special 2020 box set included several songs to which he had contributed, including a never-before-released demo track that has amassed 949,000 views on YouTube.
But in Tuesday’s response, the band’s lawyers say those allegations are deeply flawed. Among other issues, they say the lawsuit failed to clearly identify what songs Christener was involved with and instead relies on “open-ended” statements like that he’d “likely” been involved in “numerous” songs. “Defendants cannot reasonably be expected to know how to respond to the [lawsuit] without knowing which copyrights are being addressed,” the complaint reads.
For the songs that were properly identified, the band’s attorneys say the lawsuit is clearly barred by the statute of limitations. Copyright ownership disputes must be filed within three years, they say, adding that the band has obviously refused to acknowledge his claims for far longer than that.
“Defendants repudiated Plaintiff’s purported ownership in any and all of the works mentioned in the [lawsuit] more than three years before Plaintiff filed this lawsuit — and indeed for over two decades,” the band’s lawyers wrote.
Even for the never-before-released songs, Linkin Park says Christener missed his window: “The Box Set was released in October, 2020; this action was filed on November 8, 2023 — over three years later.”
Christener’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
A federal judge is allowing music publishers to move forward with a copyright lawsuit filed against X Corp. over allegations of widespread copyright infringement on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
In a split ruling Tuesday (Mar. 5), Judge Aleta A. Trauger tossed out major parts of the case, like the accusation that X itself directly infringed any music. But she allowed some of the lawsuit’s core allegations — that X essentially enabled illegal behavior by its users by refusing to crack down on them — to move ahead.
In one example, the judge ruled that the music companies could pursue their “particularly striking” allegation that Twitter had been less willing to crack down on users who had paid for “verified” status.
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“If X Corp. truly did allow some users to effectively purchase the right to be able to infringe with less severe consequences, then that was plausibly an instance of promoting X/Twitter’s use to infringe copyright,” the judge wrote.
The case against Twitter was filed in June by dozens of music publishers, who claim that users on the Elon Musk-owned site had infringed over 1,700 songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — a claim that, if proven, could put the social media giant on the hook for $255 million in damages.
The case was organized by the National Music Publishers’ Association, which has long argued that Twitter is the last major social media service that refuses to license music. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat have all allegedly entered into such deals with publishers, providing a library of licensed music for users to legally add to their posts. The lawsuit claimed that Twitter had, instead, effectively allowed its users to supply such music illegally.
The case was filed by Concord, Universal Music Publishing Group, peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and Wixen Music Publishing.
Twitter moved to dismiss the lawsuit in August, arguing that social media sites clearly do not directly infringe copyrights when users upload illegal material. And they argued that digital services also cannot be sued for so-called secondary infringement unless they take active steps to aid the illicit behavior: “In this case, plaintiffs do not allege that X encouraged, induced, or took affirmative steps with the intent to foster the infringement of plaintiffs’ works,” the company’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Trauger partly agreed with Twitter’s arguments. She easily dismissed the allegations of direct infringement, citing recent Supreme Court precedents, and also ruled that the company could not be held liable for “vicarious infringement” — meaning it profited directly from allowing illicit materials on the site. She also ruled that the music companies could not accuse X of so-called contributory infringement simply by offering tools that could sometimes be abused by infringers.
“Many of the supposedly problematic practices that the plaintiffs identify are unremarkable features of X/Twitter generally that X Corp. has simply failed to fence off completely from infringers,” the judge wrote. “The plaintiffs have not identified any basis for concluding that X Corp. was obligated to make its service worse for everyone, just to punish the people who misuse it.”
But Judge Trauger said other alleged conduct, if ultimately proven, could put Twitter on the hook for damages. One such claim, she said, is the allegation that X committed contributory infringement by failing to crack down on “severe serial infringers” who “openly and obviously used the service as a tool for repeatedly posting infringing content.”
“If … there was a class of X/Twitter users who were brazenly using the platform as an infringement tool, and X Corp. made the decision to unreasonably withhold enforcement of its own policies against those users … then X Corp. could plausibly be held contributorily liable,” the judge wrote.
Another claim Judge Trauger allowed to move forward was that X took too long to respond to takedown notices from copyright owners: “If X Corp. engaged in egregious delays in responding to valid takedown notices, or outright ignored some notices that were both facially and actually valid, that could support liability.”
Notably, Tuesday’s ruling did not address the thorny issue of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal law that provides sites like Twitter with immunity — a “safe harbor” — from litigation over material uploaded by their users, so long as they promptly remove it when asked. The music publishers say X clearly failed to do so; the site strongly denies that point.
Though X’s initial motion to dismiss the case did not invoke the DMCA, the company’s lawyers will undoubtedly do so at a later stage of the case now that some of the claims are moving forward. When they do so, the statute will provide X lawyers with another avenue for defeating the allegations that Judge Trauger refused to dismiss on Tuesday.
An attorney for X did not return a request for comment on Tuesday evening.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokeswoman for the NMPA said the group was “pleased” with the ruling: “The spread of rampant music piracy on the platform is obvious and unacceptable, and we look forward to securing just compensation for the songwriters and music publishers whose work is being stolen.”
Sammy Hagar has won a court order barring an allegedly unauthorized Hollywood location of his Cabo Wabo Cantina from continuing to use the chain’s name and branding while their dispute plays out before a judge.
In a preliminary injunction issued Tuesday (Mar. 5), a Los Angeles federal judge sided with Hagar’s company, Red Head Inc., and ruled franchisee Robert Azinian was prohibited from using “Cabo Wabo” trademarks for any purpose, including a new location on Hollywood Boulevard that sparked the rocker’s lawsuit.
When it comes to that particular eatery, Judge George H. Wu wrote that the injunction specifically bars Azinian from “representing to the public, in any way, that the Restaurant is an authorized Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurant.”
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Tuesday’s order came amid an escalating legal dispute between Hagar and his former business partner over Cabo Wabo Cantina — a brand of Mexican-themed eateries started by the Van Halen rocker in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in 1990 and later franchised into locations in Las Vegas and Hollywood.
Azinian’s company, which operated the Hollywood outpost for years, sued Hagar in September, claiming the singer had repeatedly breached their agreements and then unfairly tried to terminate the deal. The lawsuit claimed that the two sides had been at odds for more than a year over Azinian’s concerns that Hagar’s company was failing to support the Hollywood franchise. His lawsuit noted one such grievance was that the rock star himself was “not visiting and entertaining” at that location.
Hagar’s company (Red Head) hit back in January, filing a separate lawsuit in federal court that accused Azinian of infringing the Cabo Wabo trademarks. The case claimed that the partnership had clearly and lawfully been terminated because of Azinian’s own actions, but that Azinian had chosen to “surreptitiously” open a new location in Hollywood anyway.
Last month, Red Head asked for an immediate injunction — warning that Azinian was using Hagar’s branding but that the company had no oversight over the business, including the quality of food: “Every day that the Cabo Wabo Cantina at the new Hollywood location continues to operate under the ‘Cabo Wabo’ brand, it soils the name, reputation, and goodwill that Red Head has developed.”
In Tuesday’s order, Judge Wu was seemingly swayed by those arguments. He said Hagar’s company was likely to eventually win the lawsuit, and that it would face so-called “irreparable harm” if Azinian was able to continue using the Cabo Wabo Cantina branding while the case played out.
“Red Head has shown that it has suffered, and will continue to suffer, irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction — including harm to Red Head’s reputation and loss of goodwill, both of which are not fully remediated by damages,” Judge Wu wrote.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Top music law firm King Holmes Paterno & Soriano is firing back at a legal malpractice lawsuit filed by the band Sublime, arguing that the group has “falsely and maliciously” sued to get out of paying their hefty legal bills.
A month after Sublime sued its former attorneys — Howard King, Peter Paterno and Joseph M. Carlone — over allegations of a “pattern of self-dealing,” the firm filed a scathing countersuit Monday (Mar. 4). In it, they argue that the band still owes the firm $100,000 in fees after abruptly ending a decades-long attorney-client relationship.
“While Sublime had the right to terminate its lawyers at any time, it has no right to sidestep its responsibility to pay fees it incurred,” the firm wrote. “Yet, in an obvious and pathetic attempt to do exactly that, plaintiffs, presumably at the prodding of reputationally challenged new advisors, have cynically elected to file a trumped-up preemptive malpractice suit falsely and maliciously accusing the law firm of conflicts of interest they claim caused them unspecified damages.”
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The filing from King Holmes aimed to rebut many of Sublime’s specific allegations, including the band’s accusation that the firm steered it into a merchandise deal without disclosing that the company was another one of the firm’s clients — a move Sublime claimed cost the band millions.
In Monday’s filing, the firm said it had disclosed that potential conflict of interest to the band members and that they had consented to the arrangement. King Holmes said it even invited the band members’ personal attorneys to be involved in the negotiations to avoid any doubt.
“At the request of Sublime and its partners, KHPS helped secure a state-of-the-art merchandising agreement with one of the world’s few most preeminent music merchandisers, which also was Sublime’s merchandiser of choice,” the firm wrote. “That merchandiser paid and continues to pay Sublime higher royalties on a much broader range of products and with other more favorable terms than its main competitor offered.”
King Holmes Paterno & Soriano touts an eye-popping list of music industry clients, from Dr. Dre to Pharrell Williams to Blink-182 to the Tupac Shakur estate. King famously represented Williams and Robin Thicke in the “Blurred Lines” copyright case; Paterno represented Metallica in its legal battles against Napster over internet piracy.
But in late January, Sublime boldly announced that it was no longer one of those clients by filing a malpractice lawsuit. In it, the band claimed that the firm had “failed in their ethical, fiduciary, and lawyerly obligations to protect the interests of their clients,” including by “playing both sides” on multiple occasions.
“Behind their façade as music industry power brokers, KHPS’ number one priority was not their client Sublime’s legal and business goals, but rather KHPS’ own financial and business interests,” the band’s new attorneys wrote. “Despite holding themselves out to the public as highly experienced in the business side of music, … defendants engaged in a pattern of self-dealing that was rife with potential and actual, conflicts of interest.”
The case was filed by Sublime’s surviving members, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh, as well as by the widow and son of Bradley Nowell, Sublime’s original lead singer who died of a drug overdose in 1996. The band’s corporate entities — Sublime Merchandising LLC and Jake And Troy Brand LLC — were also named as plaintiffs.
But in Monday’s countersuit, the firm said it had “diligently and loyally represented Sublime and its business interests” for decades, an arrangement from which the band “benefited greatly.” King Holmes said it had “successfully used its music industry knowledge and experience” to aid the band on a wide range of business ventures, from music deals to merchandising to film projects: “KHPS’ work empowered Sublime and its partners to preserve and capitalize on their most valuable assets, the band’s music and trademark.”
The firm went even further, suggesting that Sublime had perhaps been motivated by “predatory new advisors” to file baseless allegations in court.
“A cursory investigation done in good faith, had plaintiffs or their advisors cared to make the minimal effort needed to conduct one before pulling the litigation trigger, would have demonstrated what plaintiffs and their advisors already knew or should have known — that nothing could be further from the truth,” the firm wrote.
In technical terms, Monday’s filing accused Sublime and its surviving members of breach of contract and other related violations, saying they had violated their agreement by failing to pay the firm $108,852 in past-due legal bills. The case will be litigated alongside the original allegations filed in January.
An attorney for Sublime did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Scott Storch hasn’t been in the news of late save for making an appearance during the early days of VERZUZ and producing tracks here and there over the past few years. The hitmaking keyboardist was hit with a lawsuit after reportedly not paying a $65,000 bill to a California jeweler.
Scott Storch, 50, was slapped with a lawsuit from Peter Marco of Extraordinary Jewels in Beverly Hills, according to a report from TMZ. Marco says in the filing documents that the monies owed to him by Storch date back to January 2020. Storch bought a diamond-studded platinum ring valued at $61,000.
At one point, Storch was maintaining monthly installment payments but Marco shared in his documents that Storch last paid in 2021 with a bill of $65,5000. Marco’s legal team gave Storch’s side a pair of letters demanding payment with the looming threat of a lawsuit. When the letters did not garner a response from Storch, Marco’s team filed the lawsuit.
According to the outlet, Scott Storch has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
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The judge set to oversee Diddy’s upcoming “gang rape” trial has introduced a new ruling involving the unidentified accuser that could slow up the case.
According to reports, the federal judge that will oversee the trial stemming from a lawsuit filed against Diddy accusing him of sexual trafficking and being involved in the gang rape of the victim cannot move forward unless the victim identifies herself. In the documents related to the new ruling, Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke did acknowledge that this could “have a significant impact” on the accuser but that they “failed to prove” that they could proceed on an anonymous basis.
“While the court does not take Plaintiff’s concerns lightly, the Court cannot rely on generalized, uncorroborated claims that disclosure would harm Plaintiff to justify her anonymity,” Judge Clarke wrote in the filing. She would go on to write that cases where the accuser’s identity is undisclosed were “the exception and not the rule.” Judge Clarke cited previous lawsuits filed against actor Kevin Spacey and former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in which the respective John Doe and Jane Does had to disclose their identity.
Douglas Wigdor, who represented Diddy’s ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in her suit against him, said that Jane Doe came forward after realizing “she too had been sex trafficked and that Mr. Combs’ behavior in forcing women into nonconsensual sex was not an isolated incident or unique only to Ms. Ventura.”
The lawsuit alleges that Diddy, former Bad Boy President Harve Pierre and an unidentified third man had coerced Jane Doe, then 17, from Michigan to New Jersey, “plied her with drugs and alcohol” and ultimately raped her in a Manhattan recording studio in 2003. Diddy has since filed an 11-page response to the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, claiming that he “never participated in, witnessed, or was or is presently aware of any misconduct, sexual or otherwise, relating to plaintiff in any circumstance whatsoever.”
The filing by his new team of lawyers (which includes the same attorney that represented Jeffrey Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell) claims the lawsuit is “unconstitutional.” Harve Pierre has also filed his official response to the lawsuit, saying that he “never participated in the sexual assault of the plaintiff nor did he ever witness anyone else sexually assaulting the plaintiff.”
A federal judge ruled Thursday (Feb. 29) that an unnamed woman suing Sean “Diddy” Combs over allegations that he “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” her must reveal her identity as the case moves forward.
The judge acknowledged that disclosing the accuser’s identity “could have a significant impact on her” due to the “graphic and disturbing allegations in this case,” but said the woman had failed to prove that she could proceed anonymously.
“While the court does not take plaintiff’s concerns lightly, the Court cannot rely on generalized, uncorroborated claims that disclosure would harm plaintiff to justify her anonymity,” Judge Jessica G. L. Clarke wrote.
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The judge cited previous lawsuits against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein in which John Doe and Jane Doe accusers, respectively, had been denied anonymity and said that allowing cases to proceed under a pseudonym in the U.S. court system was “the exception and not the rule.”
The ruling will not take effect immediately; instead, the accuser will not be revealed until after the judge rules on Diddy’s pending motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It’s unclear when that ruling might come. If the case survives, the Jane Doe will be forced to reveal her name.
Thursday’s decision came in one of several abuse cases filed against the hip-hop mogul late last year. In the current case, the unnamed Jane Doe accuser claims that Combs and former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre “plied” her with drugs and alcohol before raping her in a Manhattan recording studio when she was a high school junior.
Combs has strongly denied those allegations, saying: “I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.” Last week, he formally responded to the lawsuit, arguing that that the allegations are “fictional” and violate his constitutional right to due process.
For months, the two sides have wrangled over whether the Jane Doe accuser could proceed anonymously. She argued that the media attention she would face would result in fresh trauma, adding to what she already allegedly suffered. Diddy’s attorneys argued strongly the other way, saying it would be unfair to let his accuser proceed under a pseudonym while his name was dragged through the mud.
On Thursday, the judge sided clearly with Diddy’s argument, ruling that she had failed to show the kind of “particularized harm or current vulnerabilities” that would necessitate such special status.
“Although this case involves highly sensitive allegations and Doe has not publicly revealed her identity, all other factors weigh against Plaintiff’s motion should this case survive Defendants’ dispositive motions,” the judge wrote.