Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs claims no legal basis for sex assault lawsuit

Posted at 11:34 AM, April 29, 2024

NEW YORK (Court TV) — Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging sexual assault by the music mogul, saying that the “false, offensive and salacious accusations” are fundamentally flawed.

photo of Sean 'Diddy' Combs

FILE – Music mogul and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs arrives at the Billboard Music Awards, May 15, 2022, in Las Vegas. Combs pushed back against a woman’s lawsuit that accused him of sexual assault. Combs’ lawyers filed a motion Friday, April 26, 2024, to dismiss some claims. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Combs is currently facing multiple lawsuits in Los Angeles and New York alleging sexual assault, sex trafficking and abuse. On Friday, Combs’ attorneys filed a motion to dismiss large portions of one of the suits filed in New York. The suit, filed in Nov. 2023, targets Combs and several of his companies, including Bad Boy Records.

Court TV obtained the lawsuit, filed by a woman who says she went to dinner with Combs on Jan. 3, 1991. The alleged victim, who says she was a college student at the time, claims that while at dinner she was “intentionally drugged” and sexually assaulted. The lawsuit additionally claims that the attack was videotaped, and that “Days later, a male friend revealed to her that he had viewed the ‘sex tape’ along with other men. Horrified, [the victim] asked how many others saw it, to which he responded, ‘Everyone.'”

A representative for Combs sent his motion to dismiss some of the claims to Court TV on Friday, immediately after it was filed. The filing not only denies the sexual assault but argues that statutes the alleged victim claims Combs violated did not exist in 1991. Among those statutes is the state’s “revenge porn” law, which was signed in 2019.

Combs’ attorneys also argue that the alleged victim has no standing to sue Combs’ business ventures, which had not yet been founded at the time of the alleged assault.

The alleged victim, in her lawsuit, said that she was inspired to file the lawsuit after similar lawsuits were filed against Combs, which “forced her to face his assault again.”

No criminal charges related to the incident were ever filed against Combs.

Other recent lawsuits filed against Combs have accused him of grooming a victim for actor Cuba Gooding, Jr., and have named him as a codefendant in lawsuits alleging sexual assault by his son, Christian Combs. Agents with Homeland Security Investigations raided Combs’ properties in Miami and Los Angeles last month, as part of what law enforcement officials said was part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation.