Sexual assault lawsuit against Diddy takes a perplexing turn: Legal team files for dismissal of some allegations
Diddy's legal team's dismissal of the charges against him hinges on the idea that his companies didn't exist at the time of the alleged incident.
Diddy's legal team is looking forward to portions of the civil lawsuit against the disgraced hip-hop mogul, accusing him of sexual assault and revenge porn, to be dropped. Filing a motion on Friday, April 26, his attorneys urged a New York court judge to dismiss some of the claims against him in Joi Dickerson-Neal's lawsuit.
Doubling down on denial, Sean Combs' attorneys labelled the allegations against the music producer “false, offensive and salacious.” Documents obtained by XXL elaborate on how Diddy's counsel based their arguments for dismissing certain allegations as they “were brought under statutes that did not exist at the alleged misconduct occurred.”
Diddy sexual assault and revenge porn lawsuit
While urging the court to drop certain claims, Combs' attorneys underscored the irrelevance of some statutes at the time of the alleged sexual assault in 1991. They claimed that the human trafficking claim under the New York Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Law is not applicable in Diddy's case since the law only came into effect in December 2017, i.e. 25 after the alleged assault.
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“As a statute cannot apply to conduct occurring before it existed, a plaintiff cannot sue an entity for conduct that allegedly took place before it existed,” Diddy's lawyers highlighted in their filed motion.
Joi Dickerson-Neal filed the said 22-page lawsuit against the Bad Boy Entertainment founder and his companies in 2023. The civil suit accused Diddy of sexually assaulting her when she was a 19-year-old college student in 1991. The suit also suggests that he recorded the incident without her consent, and the video was later shared among others. Per the suit, she also appeared in a music video with Diddy.
Diddy had initially severely denied the allegations, accusing Dickerson-Neal of exploiting the law in a“purely a money grab” scenario. Although Combs has maintained his denial, the latest development in the lawsuit against him takes a novel approach by not focussing as much on vehemently turning down the allegations but the fact that his companies - Bad Boy Entertainment and Combs Entertainment didn't exist when the alleged incident occurred.
