Hearing in inmate's lawsuit against Sean 'Diddy' Combs to continue in Lenawee County
ADRIAN — A motion to set aside a $100 million judgment and dissolve a temporary restraining order against hip-hop star Sean "Diddy" Combs was left unresolved Tuesday after a brief hearing in Lenawee County Circuit Court.
Citing the number of cases remaining on her docket, Judge Anna Marie Anzalone scheduled the continuation of the emergency hearing requested by Combs' attorneys for 11 a.m. Wednesday after an attorney for Combs took up most of the 20 minutes allotted for the case on Monday.
Mondays in circuit court are primarily dedicated to hearings on motions in civil cases, mostly divorces. Anzalone told Combs' lead attorney, David Fink, she would not inconvenience the 30 people involved in other cases scheduled Monday to extend Combs and Cardello-Smith's hearing. She earlier told him she had read the arguments that had been filed and asked him to be brief in his oral arguments, and she threatened to hold him in contempt as he interjected to try to continue his arguments as Anzalone reviewed her schedule for a new date.
"I'm going to get you in right away, but I'm not going to inconvenience the other people that are in front of me for you on an emergency hearing," she said.
Combs was represented by Fink and three other attorneys, while Cardello-Smith, who filed the lawsuit on his own, was represented Monday by attorney Paul Hughes.
Hughes told Anzalone he had a scheduling conflict on Tuesday.
Cardello-Smith, a Michigan inmate who is serving up to 75 years on criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping charges, filed a lawsuit in June claiming Combs sexually assaulted him in June 1997 during a party that, he said in a pretrial statement he later filed with the court, took place at a hotel in Adrian. In a hearing in August, Anzalone granted Cardello-Smith a temporary restraining order that prevented Combs from selling real estate or other assets for 90 days. No one representing Combs appeared for that hearing. Cardello-Smith argued the order was necessary to prevent Combs from divesting himself of assets that could be used to pay for any potential award from his lawsuit.
In a hearing Sept. 9, Anzalone awarded Cardello-Smith a $100 million default judgment when, again, no one representing Combs appeared, either by video or in person.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many court matters are conducted by video, particularly if they involve out-of-town attorneys or the people involved in the cases do not live nearby or cannot take the time to travel to the judicial building in Adrian due to work or other commitments.
Also Monday, Combs, who was the subject of a sex trafficking investigation and a pair of federal raids, was arrested Monday in Manhattan.
Combs' attorney Marc Agnifilo confirmed the news to USA TODAY in a statement, saying, "We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the U.S. Attorney’s Office."
Combs was taken into custody "based on a sealed indictment" filed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, SDNY announced on social media. While the specific charges were not disclosed, the indictment is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning.
Fink said their main argument to set aside the default judgment and dissolve the temporary restraining order is that Combs was never served with the lawsuit. Combs lives in Miami, Fink said, while the lawsuit was supposedly delivered by registered mail to a residence Combs owns in Los Angeles. However, Fink said, the court file contains two copies of the return receipt and one appears to have been altered to show that it had been properly delivered as a restricted delivery, which is required by court rules. That means only the addressee or an authorized person can sign for it.
In an affidavit filed with the court, Combs said he has not authorized anyone to receive mail for him.
It appeared that when Cardello-Smith got the return receipt, he realized he had not checked the boxes for it to be restricted delivery before mailing the lawsuit and checked them to make it look like it had been properly served, Fink said.
Further, the signature on the receipt is nothing like Combs' signature nor even like Combs' purported signature that is included in another document Cardello-Smith filed, Fink said.
Cardello-Smith's credibility is at question in this case, Fink said. Cardello-Smith is a "serial litigant," he said, who has been "found by the federal court … to have filed at least four frivolous lawsuits. That's before this one."
Fink made note of a lawsuit Cardello-Smith filed in Monroe County that is almost identical to the Lenawee County case. The existence of the Monroe County lawsuit was first reported by The Daily Telegram. Fink said the main difference between the lawsuits is that in the Monroe County case, Cardello-Smith says the assault took place in a Holiday Inn in Monroe. In the Lenawee County claim, the city is whited out.
There was no Holiday Inn in Adrian in June 1997, Fink said.
That information also was previously reported by the Telegram, though the hotel that originally was a Holiday Inn continued to be called by that name by some local people long after it changed brands.
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In other documentation, Cardello-Smith says the assault happened in Adrian and that he was living in Detroit and Adrian at the time.
Similarly, Fink said, in another paragraph where Cardello-Smith explains why the court has jurisdiction, in the Monroe County case, it says Monroe while in the Lenawee County case, the name of the county is whited out. He said it was unusual to include this kind of statement, which is typically for divorce cases.
Along with the inconsistencies in the two lawsuits and the certified mail receipts, Fink said they had just learned Monday morning that Michigan Department of Corrections records show Cardello-Smith has only had three visits this year, and none are Sean Combs. Cardello-Smith told Anzalone in August that Combs had visited him two weeks before at Ernest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights and offered to settle the case for $2.3 million. Cardello-Smith told Anzalone he rejected that offer and Combs told him he would ignore the lawsuit.
The Daily Telegram requested the same information from the MDOC on Friday but has not heard back as of Monday afternoon.
Fink said even if the lawsuit had been properly served, Cardello-Smith could not prevail because the statute of limitations has expired. Under the sexual assault law in 1997, the statute of limitations. Even if one were to apply the current 10-year limit, it still would have expired.
At the start of the hearing, Cardello-Smith told Anzalone that staff at Brooks Correctional Facility told him he would be removed from the general population and moved to a Level 4 prison where it would be more difficult to work on this case. He said he is a Level 2 prisoner now and has no citations for misconduct. Level 2 prisoners have fewer restrictions on them. Cardello-Smith noted he was in shackles Monday as he sat in a room at the prison used for video court appearances while he had not been in shackles for his previous hearings. He alleged that the prison staff want to get money out of him if he wins his case in exchange for keeping him at Level 2.
Anzalone told him she has no authority over the Department of Corrections.
— Contact reporter David Panian at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian. USA TODAY contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Hearing in Michigan inmate's lawsuit against Sean 'Diddy' Combs to continue