Jay-Z Seeks Dismissal of Teen Rape Accuser’s Case, Punishment for Lawyer
Jay-Z has filed a new motion to dismiss the lawsuit of a woman who alleged that Sean “Diddy” Combs and the Roc Nation mogul sexually assaulted her as a 13-year-old during a VMAs afterparty in 2000.
The rapper, real name Shawn Carter, filed his latest bid to have a judge toss the case on Wednesday, highlighting what they claim are impossibilities and inconsistencies in the woman’s account. Carter’s attorneys relied heavily on an interview the Jane Doe accuser gave to NBC News last December, where she admitted to “making some mistakes” in aspects of her story.
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Carter’s lawyers are also seeking to have U.S District Judge Analisa Torres impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer Tony Buzbee, claiming that he failed to properly vet the woman’s story before filing the highly explosive case.
“To sign a pleading accusing someone of such a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegation — particularly when the defendant’s prominence means that the allegation will be repeated in headlines across the world — is deeply wrong and unethical,” Carter’s attorney Alex Spiro argued in court papers obtained by Rolling Stone. “If lawyers do not face consequences for such a cavalier effort to destroy another person’s reputation and inflict emotional harm on his loved ones, that tactic will proliferate.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Buzbee said he won’t be “bullied or intimidated” by Carter and his team. “Mr. Spiro and his firm are paid by the hour. So, they file a lot of junk with the Court,” he said. “With each frantic filing, his team reeks of desperation. He and his team think the laws and rules don’t apply to them. They are flat wrong. They also think they can bully or intimidate counsel for victims by filing meritless and frivolous pleadings full of lies and half-truths. Again, they are dead wrong … We will address the utter lack of merit with his filing with the Court, rather than with the press.”
The request for dismissal and actions follows Carter’s adamant denials and escalating war against Buzbee, who claims to represent more than 120 clients who wish to bring cases against Combs. Calling the allegation “heinous” last month, Carter said he would vigorously defend himself against an “idiotic” attempt at blackmail. “I will not give you ONE RED PENNY,” he wrote in a statement. (Representatives for Combs have previously denied the woman’s accusation.)
The Jane Doe accuser, who filed her original complaint in October and amended it in December to name Carter, claimed that she found her way to Combs’ exclusive afterparty after trying to gain entry to MTV’s Video Music Awards in 2000. While waiting outside the venue, Doe, who is now 38 and lives in Alabama, alleged that she met a driver who claimed to work for Combs, who took her to the Bad Boy Entertainment founder’s afterparty a few hours later.
Upon arrival at the party, the woman claimed she had to sign paperwork that she believed to be a non-disclosure agreement. She allegedly accepted a drink from a circling waitress and began mingling with other guests, including musician Benji Madden.
Soon after taking sips of her drink, the woman claimed that she began to feel lightheaded and snuck into a bedroom to rest. Combs, Carter and an unnamed female celebrity allegedly entered the room soon after, according to her complaint. Combs “aggressively approached Plaintiff with a crazed look in his eyes, grabbed her, and said, ‘You are ready to party!’” her suit alleged. The men allegedly took turns assaulting Doe while the female celebrity watched.
The alleged encounter ended when the woman claimed to have punched Combs in the neck and escaped the home. The woman claimed that she ran to a nearby gas station and called her father to come pick her up.
But the woman’s story began to be questioned when her father told NBC he did not recall ever picking her up, saying he would remember making a 10-hour round trip to retrieve his teenage daughter. A representative for Madden also said he was on tour with his band Good Charlotte in Chicago at the time. “I have made some mistakes,” the woman told NBC in a follow-up interview. “I may have made a mistake in identifying.”
Carter’s lawyers included a copy of the NBC interview in court paperwork, routinely citing the inconsistencies as justification for why the lawsuit should be dismissed and why Buzbee should be sanctioned. They also pointed out other purported impossibilities in the woman’s story, including watching the awards show on a Jumbotron and Combs’ owning a home with a “U-shaped driveway” that was roughly 20 minutes away from Midtown Manhattan.
“By any objective measure, the fact that nearly every step in Plaintiff’s narrative — from her arrival at the VMAs to her interactions with the limousine driver and celebrities to the ride with her father — turns out to be false or highly unlikely casts considerable doubt on Plaintiff’s allegation that Mr. Carter raped her, which he did not,” Carter’s attorneys write.
Still, the woman said she stands by her claims. “Honestly, what is the clearest is what happened to me and [the] route that I took to what happened to me,” she said.
As Carter fights the Jane Doe’s case, he is also going after Buzbee in a separate lawsuit in California, suing the national trial attorney for extortion and defamation for his statements and practices used while pursuing the Jane Doe’s case. Buzbee fired back in his own lawsuit against the rapper’s company, Roc Nation, and law firm Quinn Emanuel, claiming they were using “shadowy operatives” to illegally entice former Buzbee clients into filing “frivolous” claims against him.
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