Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy Files Bombshell Motion to Dismiss Revenge Porn, Trafficking Claims

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Sean “P. Diddy'' Combs has officially responded to one of the huge lawsuits filed against him. Joi Dickerson-Neal claims Combs drugged and raped her after a date in 1991. She also claims Combs filmed the assault and shared it widely with friends. Combs’ attorneys claim Dickerson-Neal cannot bring claims against Combs using laws that didn’t exist at the time of the alleged assault. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes the lengthy motion and its implications.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOWIf you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser, find out if you have a claim in a few clicks by visiting https://incognitoclaims.com/sidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller

that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Sean Diddy Combs has just filed a major legal response fighting back against one of his accusers who sued him for sexual assault and revenge porn. We're going to break it all down for you right now. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Hey everybody, this is a law and crime legal alert. Google Incognito tracked users browsing data without their knowledge. And Mass Tort Alliance, one of our legal sponsors, is helping users file for compensation due to Google misleading the privacy of their

incognito browser. So if you've used Google Incognito any time since 2016, you can start your claim in less than 10 questions at incognito claims.com slash sidebar. We have a legal development for you right now in the Sean Diddy Combs saga and legal response from the rapper and music mogul, to be more precise. Now, it's no secret that we have been actively covering every update when it comes to Combs here on Sidebar ever since he had been hit with a number of lawsuits in his homes in L.A. and Miami were raided by Homeland Security agents, this reportedly pursuant to an ongoing going sex trafficking investigation out of New York, although to be very clear, as of right now,

there have been no arrests, nor no criminal charges in connection with this investigation. But what we do have is a legal response from Diddy's legal team to one of the major lawsuits that was filed against him. And this one concerns a woman named Joy Dickerson Neal. She filed a lawsuit in New York against Combs and his affiliated company's Bad Boy Entertainment and Combs Enterprises LLC. She filed this lawsuit last year. We talked about it previously here on Sidebar.

But she claims that Combs drugged, sexually assaulted, and abused her back in 1991 while she was in college. Her lawsuit says, quote, plaintiff recalls feeling humiliated and hurt, yet she could not escape the assault because she had been drugged. Plaintiff lacked the physical ability or mental capacity to fend Combs off. It goes on to state, quote, feeling confusion, pain, embarrassment, and shame. plaintiff did not go to the hospital or report the assault to the police and sought refuge in her apartment, avoiding any outside contact.

Now, from there, she claimed that Combs actually videotaped the assault and then proceeded to share the tape with other people as a form of revenge porn. Quote, Devante Swing, a member of R&B group Jodakai, told plaintiff that Combs had filmed himself sexually assaulting plaintiff and had shown the video to swing in others while working at the studio. Plaintiff asked Swing, who had seen the video, and he replied, everyone. Now, Dickerson Neal claims that she filed police report. She spoke to prosecutors, but she was told there would need to be corroboration for there to be a case.

She says she tried to approach colleagues and friends, but people were apparently scared of Combs. She also recounted a very strange moment when she says she ran into Combs after all this happened, and he pleaded with her that he didn't do what she was accusing him of. And from there, she says, Com star rose, and he became the mogul that we know him to be today. She says this whole ordeal resulted in depression, suicidal ideation, that she was hospitalized. She even had to drop out of college. She left the music industry that she was a part of. She had worked at a DJ management company at one point.

Now, Dickerson Neal explains in the complaint that she spent years trying to recover from her trauma. But it wasn't until Cassandra Ventura, who we spoke about a lot here on Cybar. It wasn't until Ventura filed her lawsuit against Sean Combs back on November 16, 2023, when everything changed for her. This, she says, forced her to face this alleged assault again. Ventura filed a lawsuit against Combs for sexual assault, abused sex trafficking, ended up settling with him the next day. Dickerson Neal says, quote,

After reading about the lawsuit, plaintiff spoke to an ex-boyfriend for the first time in years after reading Ms. Ventura's lawsuit. During their conversation, plaintiff's ex recalled how she would become physically ill, and recoil every time Combs' music was played or his name was mentioned. Still hoping for justice, plaintiff brings this case against Combs now. And now we have this lawsuit. And by the way, in terms of how these companies are on the hook as well, here's a good sampling from the complaint.

It states, quote, furthermore, defendants Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy Records, Combs' Enterprises LLC, enable defendant Combs' commission of the crimes of violence motivated by gender and thus are liable, despite the fact that it was an open, secret that Combs abused women, they continued to employ him. Now, I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about Combs' defense in a second. But Dickerson Neal, she sued under a number of different legal theories or causes of action. There is civil assault and battery. There's intentional infliction of emotional distress. There's sex trafficking. There's violation of New York state's revenge porn law. And there's a violation of New York City's victims of gender-motivated

Violence Protection Act. She's seeking damages for mental and emotional injury, pain. in suffering, distress, breach of contract, punitive damages, which is when conduct is so outrageous, so bad that these damages are a way to punish the defendant. Now, you might be saying, wait a second, wait a second, 1991, this is something over 30 years ago. Aren't these claims stale? Aren't they too old? How could she file a lawsuit?

Statue of limitations, right? Well, Mr. Gersiniel filed this lawsuit pursuant to New York's Adult Survivors Act. This was a law that had created a one-year look-back window for the survivors of sexual assault. If that assault occurred when they were over the age of 18, this now allowed them to sue their abusers, regardless of when that abuse occurred. So it was a one-year window starting from November 24th, 2022, and she filed this lawsuit November 23, 2023, right in time. A spokesperson for Combs released a statement to People magazine at the time saying, quote, this last minute lawsuit is an example of how a well-intentioned law can be turned on its head.

Mr. Dickerson's 32-year-old story is made up and not credible. Mr. Combs never assaulted her and she implicates companies that did not exist. This is purely a money grab and nothing more. Okay, because now we have this legal response from Combs. This filing is titled Memorandum of Law in support of the Combs' defendant's partial motion to dismiss the complaint. And that's what we're going to break down. So when someone files a lawsuit in New York against someone else,

the defendant has an opportunity to say to the court, listen, judge, as a matter of law, this case should be thrown out. And there are several different ways to show this. Could be that the plaintiff doesn't have the legal capacity to sue. There could be improper jurisdiction. There could be an absolute defense under the law. Or one of the most popular ways is you say there is a failure to state a claim.

What that means is you say to the, the court judge, take everything the plaintiff says in her lawsuit, take it as true, she is not even stating a valid legal claim. There's nothing to sue for. There's no cause of action. So with that in mind, what is Combs arguing here? This is where it gets interesting. He writes, quote, without addressing the complaint's numerous, false, offensive,

and salacious accusations, which the Combs defendants vehemently deny, substantially all of the claims purportedly alleged by Joy Dickerson Neal cannot survive this motion to dismiss. So he's saying, I'm not even getting into the fact that these allegations aren't true. That's a factual issue. I'm saying by law, these claims need to be tossed out. Why? Now, he provides two major legal reasons, and I'm going to explain both.

First up, Combs writes that some of these claims, these causes of action, that they were, quote, brought under statutes that did not exist at the time the alleged misconduct occurred. So Combs explains that the New York Adult Survivors Act, yes, it revives certain time-barred claims for sexual assault. But what this law does not do is it does not allow someone to revive claims under statutes that weren't even in existence when these alleged acts happen. Quote, the four statutes underlying plaintiff's claims were enacted years after the 1991 conduct alleged in the complaint, and they cannot be retroactively applied to that alleged conduct absent clear legislative intent. The New York legislature did not express any intent or purpose for those statutes to be applied retroactively. Dickerson's third cause of action in this lawsuit was for an alleged violation of New York services for victims of human trafficking law.

That became effective November 1st, 2007, 16 years after this alleged assault. The fourth cause of action alleges a claim under the New York State revenge porn law, but that went into effect September 21st, 2019, about 28 years after the alleged sexual assault. The fifth cause of action alleges a claim under the New York City victims of gender-motivated violence protection law. That became effective December 19th, 2000. The sixth cause of action alleges a claim under the New York City revenge porn law. That didn't go into effect until December 17th, 2017.

So according to Combs, all these claims have to. to be thrown out. Combs writes, New York courts uniformly recognize a deeply rooted presumption against retroactivity based on elementary considerations of fairness dictate that individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law is and to conform their conduct accordingly. And he cites case law in support of that. He goes on to explain that if you're going to apply a law retroactively, those laws need to state very clearly in their language that they do that. He says, quote, the New York Court of Appeals, by the way, that's New York's highest court, has held that statutes will not be given such construction unless the language expressly or by necessary implication requires it. And Combs says none of these laws that Dickerson Neal is suing under have any kind of express language to say that they can be applied retroactively.

And Combs cites a recent case where a plaintiff tried to bring a claim under that gender-motivated violence law I mentioned before, the same one that Dicker's Seeniel is suing under, and the plaintiff was using it to sue for alleged misconduct from the 1970s. But as Combs explains, the court said that that law couldn't be applied retroactively. Combs writes, quote, courts routinely dismissed statutory claims where the alleged conduct took place before the statute was enacted. And he cites a 2020 New York case where the court found that the New York trafficking law I mentioned before in Dickerson Neal suit was not applicable to violations allegedly occurring years before enactment of that law. So in other words, it seems what Combs is arguing, the New York Adult Survivors Act,

yes, it did give people a chance to sue for sexual assault claims that would otherwise be time-barred, and they make sense because sometimes victims or survivors, they don't come forward with their allegations for a variety of reasons, and they shouldn't be penalized for that. They should be given an opportunity to sue. However, there is a caveat. Combs is saying, what they say happened to them had to have violated a law that was in effect at the time they were assaulted. You had to have been able to bring those claims at that time, but didn't.

You can't sue now for something that wasn't really illegal at the time. So for those reasons, Combs argues the third, fourth, fifth, and six claims. And Dickerson Neal's complaint must be dismissed with prejudice. With prejudice means that Dickerson Neal wouldn't be able to refile those claims. I must tell you, looking at the case law that Combs cited, my understanding of New York law, and assuming he is correct about the language in those statutes that Dickerson Neal is suing under, he makes a very persuasive argument. Courts take a very, very careful analysis in retroactive application of laws. And I would say it's generally disfavored. In fact, the Constitution actually

forbids ex post facto criminal laws, it all comes down to the question of fundamental fairness and due process. So there could definitely be water to Combs' arguments here. But as I mentioned, there are two major legal reasons that Combs has cited for why the claims should be dismissed in this complaint. I mentioned one. Here is the other. The other is that this alleged assault happened in 1991. Combs argues that the companies that are named in Dickerson-Neil's lawsuit, they weren't even in existence when the alleged assault and misconduct occurred. Combs says that Bad Boy Entertainment was informed until 1992 and Combs Enterprises not until 2004. In fact, he includes, as exhibits attached to this response, printouts of the New York

Department of State Division of Corporation's entity information for both companies with their respective filing dates. Combs cites case law that says, quote, a corporation's existence begins when it's certificate of incorporation is filed by the Department of State. Now, if he is accurate about that, if he is accurate about the law and if he is accurate about when these companies actually started and he seemed to have provided receipts about it, that again is a pretty persuasive argument. How do you sue companies that weren't even around? They're not responsible. They didn't have a part in what happened there. But having said that, he also has a backup argument. Combs argues

that even if the companies were around at the time, nothing he allegedly did can be imputed to the companies that they aren't responsible. He writes, quote, Dickerson has not alleged that any misconduct occurred at any company defendant's place of business.

This is unsurprising as neither company existed at the time of the alleged misconduct. Aside from the conclusory use of the word enabled, there is no specific allegation of any particular act committed by either company defendant. And insofar, as the complaint alleges that the company defendants had knowledge and were put on notice of the sexual abuse allegations made against Mr. Combs from media coverage, that claim is contradicted by the allegations in the complaint. Not only did neither company defendant exist at the time of the alleged incident, but Dickerson cites only to media coverage from 2017 to 2023, which occurred long after the purported misconduct allegedly occurred. Such allegations do not establish any connection between the company defendants and the alleged misconduct rendering Dickerson's claims unsustainable as a matter of law.

Also, Combs says you want to know why these companies aren't liable as well? Because Dickerson Neal, in her complaint, didn't properly argue the theory of vicarious liability. That is when an employer is liable for the actions of their employee if those acts were committed in furtherance of the employer's business and with the scope of employment. So here's an example. If you have a waiter at a large chain restaurant who mistakenly drops detergent into a soup, the customer gets sick, that restaurant can be potentially held liable. But here, I know that was a pretty wild example, but it was the first one that came to my mind. Anyway, from here, Combs argues that what he is accused of doing is personal. It wasn't done in connection or furtherance of the businesses. And he mentioned how it didn't even

happen on the company's property. Quote, Dickerson's claims are premised on a sexual assault, New York Authority firmly establishes that sexual misconduct is a, quote, clear departure from the scope of employment, having been committed for wholly personal motives and unrelated to the furtherance of the business. And in fact, Combs cites a 2010 case where there was no vicarious liability found when there was a sexual assault committed by a UPS employee when he was delivering to the plaintiff's apartment. Now, I will tell you, it's also interesting because Combs also argues that Dickerson Neal doesn't even claim that he was an employee of these companies. And that seems to be true because from the complaint, all that I saw was Dickerson Neal list him as the founder of the companies, not an employee.

Combs argues she doesn't allege any other theory that would impose liability on the companies. Quote, Dickerson has not pleaded any facts that would support imputing the alleged personal conduct of Mr. Combs onto the company defendants. while Mr. Combs is alleged to be the founder of the company defendants, only in exceptional cases may an entity be liable for the acts of its owner. Now, this is called a reverse piercing theory. So a company could be liable for what the owner does if the company is dominated by the owner, if there are no buffers, if there are no corporate formalities, if there are no mechanisms put in place to insulate the company from the owner. and that domination was used to commit a fraud or a wrong. Combs argues Dickerson has not alleged any facts to support this reverse piercing theory over the company defendants.

It's not like if you had an entrepreneur who runs a company and then engages in a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, he has this complete control over the company, was using the company to commit this fraud. Of course, people could sue the company as well. But that is very different than what's happening here. At least that's what Combs is arguing. And I will tell you, I find this to be a persuasive argument as well. So in total, Combs argues that all of these causes of action and Dickerson Neal's complaint

that I mentioned before, as well as the second cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress against the companies, these should all be dismissed. And if that happens where they're all dismissed, I think that would only leave two claims in this lawsuit, the claims of civil assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, these claims against Sean Combs personally. That is, of course, again, if the court chooses to dismiss all of these claims. And at the very end of the filing, it seems that Combs filed a motion for oral arguments on this matter cited a date of June 12, 2024 at 9.30 a.m.

And I have to end with this. Okay, I have to say this. If the court agrees with Combs dismisses these counts, I would argue, in my opinion, these seem to be big errors in law. And I would wonder if we take her timeline as true that she seemingly only decided to file this lawsuit after Cassie Ventura filed hers. And remember, Joy Dickerson Neal, she filed right before the New York Survivors Act window was to expire. She came right up on that deadline. I do have to wonder, in my opinion, was there a rush to get this lawsuit out against Diddy?

Was everything checked? Was the law on retroactivity properly checked? Was it checked when these companies were formed? Was something missed? Was something not fully examined? I have to ask that question because if this is true, it seems that this should have been caught. I don't know. Something that came to my mind if Combs should ultimately be successful.

But remember, this is his argument. Perhaps Joy Dickerson, Neil, will say, this isn't true. I can tell you these companies were around. He's getting the law wrong on those statutes that I'm filing lawsuits under. we'll see but it is quite the argument it is quite the case and we will of course let you know what happens next in the sean diddy combs saga that's all we have for you here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us as always please subscribe on apple podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcast i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next time

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