LOS ANGELES – Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs pushed back against a woman's lawsuit that accused him of sexual assault, filing a motion on Friday to dismiss some claims that were not under law when the alleged incident occurred.
The motion filed in a New York court claims Combs cannot be sued because certain laws didn't exist when Joi Dickerson-Neal made the allegations against him in 1991.
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The music mogul's lawyers want certain statutes from Dickerson-Neal's claims such as revenge porn and human trafficking to be dismissed with prejudice.
In a filing last year, she said Combs “intentionally drugged” her, then brought her home and sexually assaulted her after a date in Harlem when she was a 19-year-old college student.
Without her knowledge, Combs videotaped the assault and later shared it with several friends in the music industry, the lawsuit alleges. He denied the allegations, accusing her of seeking to exploit the New York law that temporarily extended the statute of limitations.
While Friday’s motion seeks to dismiss the case on legal grounds, Diddy’s attorneys and the mogul “vehemently deny” what they called “numerous false, offensive, and salacious accusations” in the lawsuit.
Dickerson-Neal’s claim came nearly three decades after his alleged misconduct, and the New York State Revenge Porn Law was not codified until 2019, Combs’ lawyers said. His attorneys also pointed out a few others including the New York Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Law, which came into effect in 2007.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Dickerson-Neal has done.
Last month, Combs' properties in Los Angeles and Miami were raided by federal authorities in a sex trafficking investigation. The criminal investigation is a major escalation in the scrutiny of Combs, who has been the defendant in several recent sexual abuse lawsuits.
In a lawsuit Combs settled the day after it was filed in November, his former protege and girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, sued him alleging years of sexual abuse, including rape. The lawsuit said he forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he filmed them.
In February, a music producer filed a lawsuit alleging Combs coerced him to solicit prostitutes and pressured him to have sex with them.
Another of Combs’ accusers was a woman who said he raped her two decades ago when she was 17.
Combs and his attorneys have denied all of the allegations in the lawsuits.
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This story corrects the spelling of Joi Dickerson-Neal's surname.