Legal News
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The sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs kicked off Monday in a Manhattan federal courthouse, where federal prosecutors told jurors that the once-powerful mogul used his music empire for decades to “feed his every desire.”
On the first day of a trial expected to last two months, prosecutors painted a picture of a man who used “coercive and criminal conduct” to force at least two women to engage in drug-fueled sex parties called “freak offs.”
“For twenty years, the defendant, with the help of his trusted inner circle, committed crime after crime,” prosecutor Emily A. Johnson told the jury during her opening statements. “That’s what we’re here about today. That’s what this case is about.”
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Responding for Combs was defense attorney Teny Geragos, who admitted that the star had a “toxic” relationship with former girlfriend Cassie Ventura — including openly acknowledging that it included “domestic violence” — but said he was simply not guilty of racketeering or sex trafficking.
“Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case,” Geragos told the jury. “We take full responsibility that there was domestic violence. Domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
Combs was indicted in September, charged with running a sprawling criminal operation that aimed to “fulfill his sexual desires.” The case centers on elaborate “freak off” parties in which Combs and others would allegedly ply victims with drugs and then coerce them into having sex, as well as on alleged acts of violence to keep victims silent.
The star, once one of the music industry’s most powerful men, is formally accused of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and violating a federal prostitution statute. If convicted on all of the charges, Combs faces a potential life prison sentence.
At opening statements, prosecutors accused Combs of victimizing at least two women, including Cassie and an unnamed victim listed under a Jane Doe pseudonym. They said he used “lies, drugs, threats, and violence” to coerce the women into routinely engaging in sex with male sex workers in “dark hotel rooms.”
To keep both women silent, Johnson told the jury that Combs threatened to release videos of the encounters, one of many moves that she said kept them under his control: “It had the power to ruin her life.”
But Geragos told a very different story, repeatedly stressing that Cassie and other alleged victims had consensually chosen to have relationships with Combs and partake in what she termed his “swinger lifestyle.”
“That may not be what you like to do in your bedroom,” Geragos told the jurors. “She was not being trafficked.”
The trial will continue Monday afternoon, potentially with testimony from Cassie herself.
Billboard will update this story with more details from the trial as it unfolds.
Taylor Swift has been hit with a subpoena that officially drags her into the tense legal drama between her friend Blake Lively and Lively’s It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni. And the pop star’s reps aren’t happy, saying the move is “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
The subpoena, reportedly sent to Swift by Baldoni’s legal team, makes her a witness in the messy legal battle over alleged sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation stemming from It Ends With Us, which was released last year.
But Swift’s representatives say she has no place in the fight between Baldoni and Lively.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” a spokesperson for Swift tells Billboard.
“The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet,’” Swift’s rep adds. “Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
The It Ends With Us litigation dates back to December, when Lively brought claims alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of the film and then orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her after she complained.
Baldoni vehemently denied the claims and countersued Lively for defamation and other wrongdoing in January. Baldoni’s suit said Lively leveraged her close relationship with a “megacelebrity friend,” presumed to be Swift, to take control of the movie.
The Baldoni filing includes text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by “Ryan and Taylor,” seemingly referencing Swift and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her “most trusted partners,” comparing them to the “dragons” in the show Game of Thrones.
“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni’s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
Baldoni and Lively’s lawyers did not immediately return requests for comment Friday (May 9).
An anonymous artist is suing Uproxx for $15 million, claiming the media company’s production director sexually assaulted and harassed her at industry events, including a music festival, as well as at a Miguel video shoot.
In a lawsuit submitted to state court in Los Angeles on Thursday (May 8), the lawyer for a woman going by Jane Doe says she’s the victim of a “sustained campaign of sexual harassment, assault, stalking, fraud and workplace misconduct” by Uproxx creative production director Steven Victor Vasquez Jr.
“Defendants’ actions encompassing coerced sexual encounters, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images and persistent stalking constitute a profound violation of plaintiff’s fundamental rights to bodily autonomy, privacy and professional dignity,” writes Doe’s attorney, James Bohm. “These acts have inflicted severe emotional trauma, physical harm and substantial economic loss.”
Doe, a Phoenix-based artist published by Warner Chappell, allegedly met Vasquez at a February 2024 Grammy brunch event hosted by Uproxx. Warner Music Group (WMG) owned Uproxx at the time but has since sold the entertainment news and production company. (WMG is not named as a defendant in the complaint.)
According to Doe’s attorney, Vasquez lured her into a series of unwanted sexual encounters by promising to secure her collaborations with Uproxx and lucrative deals with brands like Sour Patch Kids, Zillow, Sparkling Ice and McDonald’s.
In June 2024, for example, Vasquez allegedly convinced Doe to attend “The Gorge music festival” (seemingly Beyond Wonderland at The Gorge) with him in Washington state. There, he apparently “pressured her to share a room, plied her with alcohol and psychedelic mushrooms and appeared naked in her bed without consent, committing sexual assault.”
Doe’s lawyer says Vasquez also forced her to look at pornographic images while on a trip to the Dominican Republic and engaged in other inappropriate behavior during an Uproxx event at Howard University and a video shoot for the R&B singer Miguel.
“Vasquez gaslighted plaintiff, accused her of fictitious affairs, attempted to terminate an employee for complimenting her and pressured her for unprotected sex,” writes Bohm.
The lawsuit says Doe tried to cut off contact with Vasquez in December 2024, but he flew to her home in Arizona and demanded sexual favors, leading her to call the Phoenix Police Department. Vasquez continued to harass her with “messages, videos, sexually explicit images and gifts” through April 2025, Doe’s lawyer alleges.
The lawsuit brings a total of 16 claims, including sexual harassment, sexual battery and stalking, and it seeks more than $15 million in damages from both Vasquez and Uproxx.
Bohm declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday (May 9). Vasquez and Uproxx’s representatives did not immediately respond to Billboard’s requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department confirmed to Billboard that it did receive a report about the alleged December 2024 incident but says no arrests were made.
Live Nation is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling last year that said the concert giant couldn’t enforce “opaque and unfair” arbitration agreements against ticketbuyers, warning the justices that the scathing ruling “creates massive uncertainty.”
The decision, issued in October by a lower court, said the contracts Live Nation had forced concertgoers to sign – requiring them to resolve disputes via private arbitration — were “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory” that they were “borderline unintelligible.”
But in a petition to the Supreme Court this week, Live Nation says that the decision must be reversed, warning it would have “far-reaching consequences” for how arbitration works and could potentially cause massive headaches for companies that have long relied on such agreements.
“If allowed to stand, the decision below will enable mass arbitration plaintiffs to continue their abusive strategy of racking up procedural costs to the point of forcing the defendant to capitulate to a settlement, rather than proving their allegations,” Live Nation’s lawyers write. “These highly disruptive consequences reinforce the need for review.”
The appeal to the Supreme Court comes in a class-action lawsuit accusing Live Nation of violating federal antitrust laws by monopolizing the market for concert tickets and engaging in “predatory” behavior. Filed in 2022 on behalf of “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of ticket buyers, the case claims Live Nation and Ticketmaster abused their dominance to charge “extraordinarily high” prices to consumers.
Faced with those allegations, Live Nation argued that fans had waived their right to sue in court when they bought their tickets because they had signed arbitration agreements — a common requirement when purchasing tickets and other services from many companies.
In rejecting that argument in October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Live Nation’s agreements were “unconscionable and unenforceable” since they would make it “impossible” for fans to fairly pursue claims against the company.
“Forced to accept terms that can be changed without notice, a plaintiff then must arbitrate under … opaque and unfair rules,” the appeals court wrote at the time. “The rules and the terms are so overly harsh or one-sided as to unequivocally represent a systematic effort to impose arbitration as an inferior forum.”
The ruling described Live Nation’s agreements in scathing terms, calling them “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible” and “poorly drafted and riddled with typos.” The terms were so confusing, the court said, that Live Nation’s own attorneys had “struggled to explain the rules” during a court hearing.
The criticism centered on Live Nation’s decision to alter its terms of use to require fans to submit to “novel and unusual” procedures for “mass arbitration.” That new process, offered by an upstart arbitration firm called New Era ADR, was aimed at handling many cases at once rather than individually, which Live Nation believed was necessitated by aggressive tactics from lawyers representing huge numbers of concertgoers.
But in rejecting that new process, the Ninth Circuit said Live Nation was essentially trying to have its cake and eat it too: “Defendants sought to gain in arbitration some of the advantages of class-wide litigation while suffering few of its disadvantages.”
In this week’s petition to the Supreme Court, it was Live Nation’s turn to level criticism – calling the Ninth Circuit’s ruling a “deeply flawed decision” that exemplified the kind of “judicial hostility” to private arbitration that’s prohibited under federal law.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision below flouts [federal arbitration law], defies this court’s precedents, and threatens to block sensible measures for addressing the new phenomenon of mass arbitration filings,” the company’s lawyers write.
The plaintiffs in the case will file a response in the weeks ahead, and the justices will decide whether to take the case at some point in the next few months. Reps for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
Bad Bunny is facing a lawsuit over allegations that a track from his chart-topping Un Verano Sin Ti featured an unlicensed sample from a Nigerian artist – and that the superstar’s reps later “stonewalled” efforts to resolve the problem.
In a copyright case filed May 2 in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for the artist Dera (Ezeani Chidera Godfrey) claim that Bad Bunny’s “Enséñame a Bailar” illegally sampled from a 2019 track called “Empty My Pocket.”
Dera’s lawyers say they’ve raised the issue with reps for Bad Bunny and others behind the song, but that they’ve “turned a blind eye” and left him with “no choice but to file this lawsuit.”
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“It is not very often that a musical artist of Bad Bunny’s caliber and sophistication uses someone else’s music without permission, and then ignores the person’s efforts to resolve the problem,” writes Dera’s attorney Robert A. Jacobs, a litigator at the top music law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips. “Such a response is especially surprising when the unauthorized use pervades the entirety of the musical artist’s work. Unfortunately, these are the circumstances here.”
The lawsuit also names as defendants The Orchard, which distributed the album, and Bad Bunny’s Rimas Entertainment, among others. Representatives for both Bad Bunny and The Orchard did not immediately return requests for comment.
Released in 2022, Un Verano Sin Ti was a mega-hit – spending 13 weeks atop the Billboard 200 and more than 150 weeks total on the album chart. “Enséñame a Bailar” was a hit in its own right, charting on the Hot 100 for two weeks and earning 72 million views on YouTube.
In his lawsuit, Dera says Bad Bunny’s song was essentially built on top of his “Empty My Pocket” – that the usage is so “extensive” that the sampling itself is “beyond question.”
“Plaintiffs’ works comprise virtually the entirety of the musical bed and a portion of the lyrics in the infringing recording and infringing composition, and, as such, account for a significant portion of the appeal of the infringing works,” his lawyers write.
They claim access to Dera’s song was provided producer Lakizo (Lekan Adesina), but that he had no authority to clear the use of the sample: “Lakizo … is not an author of ‘Empty My Pocket’ … and does not have – and never had – the right to prepare or authorize others to prepare derivative works.”
According to the lawsuit, when Dera discovered the unauthorized sample he tried to negotiate a good-faith resolution with Bad Bunny’s team, saying he wanted to “address past unauthorized uses” but also “allow future uses.” He says he also “unconditionally complied” with requests to substantiate his claim, including sharing documents showing that Lakizo had not been authorized to clear the sample.
“Despite plaintiffs’ cooperation, these defendants stonewalled plaintiffs after receiving the requested information, making clear that plaintiffs’ only option for obtaining redress for the violation of their rights would be through the courts,” Dera’s lawyers write.
iHeartRadio is facing a class-action lawsuit from subscribers after disclosing that several of its radio stations were hacked months ago, exposing Social Security numbers, financial information and other personal details.
The lawsuit came a week after the radio giant warned customers in regulatory filings last week that “an unauthorized actor viewed and obtained files” at a “small number of our local stations” in December, potentially stealing SSNs, dates of birth, and credit card info.
iHeart said it “immediately implemented our response protocols” to contain the hack, and is offering free credit monitoring to those affected. The company also said it had “strengthened its existing security measures” to “help prevent something like this from happening again.”
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Those assurances were not enough for Cheryl Shields, a subscriber who filed a proposed class action against iHeart on Wednesday in New York federal court, seeking to represent customers nationwide whose data was compromised. In doing so, her attorneys blasted iHeart for waiting four months to warn subscribers that their data was at risk.
“As a result of this delayed response, plaintiff and class members had no idea for four months that their private information had been compromised, and that they were, and continue to be, at significant risk of identity theft and various other forms of personal, social, and financial harm,” Shield’s lawyers write. “The risk will remain for their respective lifetimes.”
The data exposed in the iHeart breach “represents a gold mine for data thieves,” the lawyers write, and there has been “no assurance offered by iHeart that all personal data or copies of data have been recovered or destroyed.”
A spokesperson for iHeart did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Such lawsuits are common following data breaches. After the credit-reporting company Equifax suffered a 2017 data breach that exposed the personal data of nearly 150 million Americans, the company agreed to pay $425 million to resolve nationwide class-action litigation filed by consumers.
The scale of the iHeart data breach is undoubtedly far smaller. The company did not disclose in regulatory filings how many total victims were involved nationwide, though a notification filed in Maine said only three subscribers in that state had been impacted. Disclosure forms were also filed in California and Massachusetts, as first reported The Record.
In technical legal terms, Wednesday’s lawsuit accused iHeart of negligence, arguing that the company had a legal duty to safeguard consumer’s data.
“As a national media and audio provider in possession of millions of customers’ private information, iHeart knew, or should have known, the importance of safeguarding the
Private Information entrusted to it by Plaintiff and Class Members and of the foreseeable consequences they would suffer if iHeart’s data security systems were breached,” Shields’ lawyers write. “Nevertheless, iHeart failed to take adequate cybersecurity measures to prevent the data breach.”
Universal Music Group wants a federal judge to dismiss Drake’s updated defamation lawsuit that complained about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance of “Not Like Us,” arguing he’s just upset about a “rap artist who defeated him.”
Weeks after Drake filed an amended version of his case that claimed the halftime show was intended to “assassinate the character of another artist,” UMG fired back Wednesday – arguing that the new claims about the Super Bowl are as legally faulty as the rest of the case.
“Drake’s new allegations are astonishing,” the music giant’s lawyer Rollin Ransom writes. “As Drake concedes, Lamar’s Super Bowl performance did not include the lyric that Drake or his associates are “certified pedophiles” (i.e., the alleged “Defamatory Material” that is at the heart of this case).”
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“The focus of Drake’s new claims — that ‘the largest audience for a Super Bowl halftime show ever’ did not hear Lamar call Drake or his crew pedophiles — betrays this case for what it is: Drake’s attack on the commercial and creative success of the rap artist who defeated him, rather than the content of Lamar’s lyrics,” Ransom added.
Lamar released “Not Like Us” last May amid a high-profile beef with Drake that saw the two UMG stars release a series of bruising diss tracks. The song, a knockout punch that blasted Drake as a “certified pedophile” over an infectious beat, eventually became a chart-topping hit in its own right.
In January, Drake took the unusual step of suing UMG over the song, claiming his own label had defamed him by boosting the track’s popularity. The lawsuit, which doesn’t name Lamar himself as a defendant, alleges that UMG “waged a campaign” against its own artist to spread a “malicious narrative” about pedophilia that it knew to be false.
UMG believes the case is clearly meritless – that “hyperbolic insults” and “vitriolic allegations” are par for the course in diss tracks and cannot form the basis for a libel lawsuit. The company has pointedly noted that Drake himself was happy to make such attacks, including accusing Lamar of domestic abuse, until he lost the battle.
During the halftime show, which took place weeks after Drake filed his case, Lamar omitted the word “pedophile.” But after much speculation over whether he’d play the song at all, Kendrick really didn’t hold back otherwise – making it the centerpiece of the set and clearly rapping similar lyrics, including: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young.”
In his amended complaint last month, Drake’s attorneys argued that the decision to censor the word “pedophile” during the broadcast failed to avoid the song’s defamatory meaning – and instead had underscored the rapper’s legal case against UMG.
“Kendrick Lamar would not have been permitted to perform during the Super Bowl Performance unless the word ‘pedophile’… was omitted from the lyrics — that is because nearly everyone understands that it is defamatory to falsely brand someone a ‘certified pedophile’,” wrote Drake’s attorney Michael Gottlieb.
But in Wednesday’s motion to dismiss the case, UMG argued that Drake’s censorship argument was logically flawed.
“Drake contends that the decision not to include the word ‘pedophiles’ … could only reflect that the language is defamatory,” UMG’s lawyers write. “But this ignores any number of other explanations for the decision — such as threats by Drake of additional meritless litigation.”
Wednesday’s motion also highlighted that Drake had “removed obviously false factual allegations” from his original complaint, including that UMG directly paid for bots to boost streams of Kendrick’s track: “Drake is now reduced to citing a different podcast host who claimed that ‘Kendrick used bots’ [and] a now-deleted anonymous X comment accusing Lamar of ‘buying promo.’”
Drake’s lawyers will have a chance to respond to the motion to dismiss in the weeks ahead, and the judge will issue a ruling at some point in the next few months.
Smokey Robinson has denied shocking new claims of sexual assault, saying through his attorney that the “vile, false allegations” are merely “an ugly method of trying to extract money from an 85-year-old American icon.”
In a statement Wednesday (May 7), lawyer Christopher Frost says he will “fiercely defend” both Smokey Robinson and his wife, Frances, against the $50 million lawsuit claiming the R&B legend raped four different housekeepers over the course of nearly two decades.
“As this case progresses, the evidence (the crucial element that guides us) will show that this is simply an ugly method of trying to extract money from an 85-year-old American icon — $50 million dollars, to be exact,” writes Frost.
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Frost says he plans to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and address “numerous aspects of the complaint that defy credulity as well as issues relating to purported timelines, inconsistencies and relationships between the plaintiffs and others.”
The lawyers who brought the case did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
The statement comes one day after Smokey and Frances Robinson were sued in Los Angeles state court by four of their former housekeepers. The employees, suing anonymously, say Smokey Robinson forced them to have oral and vaginal sex in his bedroom dozens of times between 2007 and 2024.
The housekeepers claim Frances shares blame because she did nothing to stop the alleged abuse, despite knowing that her husband had a history of sexual misconduct and that he’d previously struck settlements with assault victims.
The lawsuit also says the Robinsons paid their employees below minimum wage, and that Frances Robinson created a hostile work environment replete with screaming and “racially-charged epithets.”
The settlements cited in Tuesday’s lawsuit have not been previously reported, and there’s no apparent record of prior sexual assault lawsuits against Smokey Robinson. This means that, if legitimate, the deals were likely struck confidentially and outside of court.
But the legendary R&B singer and recording executive is no stranger to the courtroom. In 2023, Robinson testified at a federal jury trial over claims that he stiffed a former manager out of nearly $1 million.
The jurors largely sided with Robinson, finding that former manager Eric Podwall was not entitled to touring profits under his contract. Podwall won just $2,000 for an unpaid record advance after the more than six-year-long legal battle with Robinson.
Days after federal prosecutors dropped Lil Durk’s rap lyrics from his murder-for-hire case, his lawyers say the new “watered-down” charges support his push to be released from jail ahead of trial.
In a court filing Tuesday (May 6), attorneys for the Chicago drill star (Durk Banks) argue that last week’s superseding indictment — which removed not just Durk’s lyrics but also allegations that he ordered a “bounty” payment — has dramatically weakened the case against him.
By removing those elements of the case, Durk’s lawyers say the feds have “effectively conceded” that they presented “false and/or misleading information” in court — both to get the rapper charged in the first place, and to persuade the judge to deny bail.
“With the issues of the lyrics and the payout of a ‘bounty’ altogether abandoned, what remains of the indictment is a weak patchwork of unsupported and non-specific allegations against Mr. Banks,” writes defense attorney Drew Findling. “This watered-down new indictment, coupled with the robust bond package proposed here, tips the balance in favor of Mr. Banks’ release pending trial.”
Durk was arrested in October on murder-for-hire and gun charges over allegations that he ordered members of his Only the Family (OTF) crew to carry out a 2022 attack on rival rapper Quando Rondo that left another man dead.
To back up that claim, the indictment cited lyrics from a song called “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” in which Durk allegedly referenced the shooting: “Told me they got an addy (go, go)/ Got location (go, go)/ Green light (go, go, go, go, go),” Durk raps in the track. “Look on the news and see your son/You screamin’, ‘No, no’ (pu–y).”
But Durk’s lawyers sharply pushed back, arguing that “Wonderful Wayne” could not have referenced the Rondo shooting for a simple reason: That the rapper wrote and recorded those verses “seven months before the incident even happened.” Though prosecutors defended the inclusion of the lyrics, an updated version of the indictment released Thursday (May 1) removed them entirely.
In Tuesday’s new court filing, Findling says the lyrics were a “hotly contested” issue at a December hearing in which the judge denied to release him on bail. Now that they’ve been removed entirely, he says the judge must reconsider whether Durk can be released.
“The government absolutely intended that section to illustrate direct involvement in the alleged murder-for-hire and more importantly, the knowledge of Mr. Banks of the alleged offense through some sort of musical confession,” Findling says. “The government has now been proven wrong and has removed the reference, substantially depreciating the weight of the allegations.”
The removal of the bounty claim presents an “even greater” blow to the government’s case, Durk’s lawyers say, and should also help persuade the judge that bail can now be granted: “With the payment of the ‘bounty’ allegation withdrawn from the indictment, the foundation for this court’s conclusions has been materially undercut.”
In previous court filings, prosecutors denied that the removal of elements from the new indictment had weakened or substantially altered the case against Durk: “Just like every iteration of the indictment before it, the [new indictment] contains significant allegations that show defendant’s alleged role in the execution-style murder of [the victim] on a busy street corner in Los Angeles.”
The judge will decide whether to reconsider Durk’s bail in the weeks ahead, potentially holding a court hearing next month. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday (May 7).
Smokey Robinson and his wife have been hit with an explosive new lawsuit that seeks $50 million in damages over claims that the legendary Motown singer repeatedly raped four housekeepers over nearly two decades.
In the suit, filed on Tuesday (May 6) in Los Angeles County Superior Court, four anonymous women say William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. had a habit of forcing housekeepers to have sex with him in the bedroom of his residence, located in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles, between 2007 and 2024.
“Plaintiffs did not consent to defendant Smokey Robinson’s sexual contact or touching,” wrote John W. Harris, an attorney representing the four housekeepers. “Plaintiffs explicitly told defendant Robinson on numerous occasions that they were not interested in his advances and objected to his forceful, physical, sexual and harmful conduct.”
The four women — called Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2, Jane Doe 3 and Jane Doe 4 in the lawsuit — claim Robinson followed a consistent pattern of assault over the years. The complaint alleges that the 85-year-old R&B singer and record executive would regularly get housekeepers alone in his blue bedroom wearing only his underwear, put a towel down on the bed, and force them to have oral and vaginal sex without a condom.
Jane Doe 1 says Robinson assaulted her in this manner at least seven times while she worked for him between 2023 and 2024. Jane Doe 2 claims she was raped at least 23 times in Robinson’s bedroom, as well as in the house’s laundry room and garage, during her employment with him between 2014 and 2020.
Jane Doe 3, who says she worked as Robinson’s housekeeper from 2012 to 2024, alleges she was assaulted at least 20 times. Jane Doe 4 does not specify how many times she was allegedly raped but says Robinson “would often create a situation” to get her alone and abuse her between 2007 and 2024.
Each of the four women claim they did not report Robinson’s conduct to law enforcement “due to her fear of losing her livelihood, familial reprisal, public embarrassment, shame and humiliation to her and her family, the possible adverse effect on her immigration status, as well as being threatened and intimidated by defendant Smokey Robinson’s well-recognized celebrity status and his influential friends and associates.”
The housekeepers say Robinson’s wife, Frances, shares the blame for these assaults. According to the plaintiffs, Frances Robinson did nothing to protect them, even though she knew her husband had a history of sexual misconduct and that he’d previously struck settlements with alleged assault victims.
The women say Frances also created a hostile work environment by “regularly screaming” and using racial slurs, and that they were paid below minimum wage and did not receive overtime or legally-mandated work breaks.
“Despite having full knowledge of defendant Smokey Robinson’s conduct, defendant Frances Robinson would further perpetuate hostilities towards plaintiffs instead of preventing further harassment and assaults,” writes the housekeepers’ lawyer. “Instead, defendant Frances Robinson, throughout plaintiffs’ employment, berated plaintiffs with derogatory, racially-charged epithets, assign[ed] additional arduous tasks, and forbid plaintiffs from exercising their rights to meals and rest periods.”
The lawsuit brings a total of 16 claims, including sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, gender violence and negligence. The four housekeepers are seeking at least $50 million in damages from Smokey and Frances for economic, emotional and physical harm.
Representatives for Smokey Robinson did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday.