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23 hours ago
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Jay-Z’s legal efforts to dismiss a case accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 have been denied by a judge in New York, with the judge in the case condemning a lawyer for the hip-hop mogul for aggressive tactics.
Jay-Z, whose given name is Shawn Carter, has denied the allegations, but the judge in the case used strong language in attacking his legal team’s actions.
“Carter’s lawyer’s relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client,” Judge Analisa Torres wrote in the court order.
Carter’s legal team have been pushing for a dismissal of the rape claim. Torres said the court “will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it”.
Torres separately granted Carter’s accuser the ability to pursue her claim anonymously as a Jane Doe, despite efforts from the defense team to have her reveal her identity publicly.
The Jane Doe claim against Carter comes from an amended lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed in October, that accused Combs of raping her after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, when she was 13 years old.
In the amended claim, the woman accused Combs and Carter of sexually assaulting her at a post-awards party and that she had begun to feel woozy after consuming a drink at the event and wandered into a nearby bedroom.
The woman claims Carter raped her first, followed by Combs. The woman says she hit Combs and ran out of the party, according to the amended lawsuit.
The accusation makes Carter the first celebrity to be accused of sexual assault in connection to Combs, who was charged by federal authorities of sex trafficking conspiracy. No other co-conspirators have been named by prosecutors. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to go on trial in May.
In a statement after Carter was accused of rape on 9 December, the 55-year-old business mogul said the allegations were “so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!! Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?”
In addition to denying the claim, Carter pointed to inconsistencies in his accuser’s account that his lawyers say proves her attorney, the Texas personal injury litigator Tony Buzbee, is looking for “money and fame”. Earlier this month, Carter’s attorney, Alex Spiro, called Doe’s case “all a fantasy”.
In an interview earlier this month, the Jane Doe admitted to NBC News that she had “made some mistakes” around corroborating witnesses in her original account.
“You should always advocate for yourself and be a voice for yourself,” she said. “You should never let what somebody else did ruin or run your life. I just hope I can give others the strength to come forward like I came forward.”
But Torres rejected Carter’s lawyers’ request for an expedited dismissal of the woman’s claim on the basis of those inconsistencies. Torres also condemned Spiro for claiming that Buzbee, the woman’s lawyer, was attempting to extort his client.
Adding complexity to the legal situation, Carter has sued Buzbee, while Buzbee has sued Carter’s company Roc Nation, producer of the NFL Super Bowl half-time show. He accuses the company and its lawyers of using “shadowy operatives” and promising paydays to illegally entice former Buzbee clients into filing “frivolous” claims against him.
But Torres’s order this week said that “since Carter’s attorney first appeared in this case 17 days ago, he has submitted a litany of letters and motions attempting to impugn the character of Plaintiff’s lawyer, many of them expounding on the purported ‘urgency’ of this case”.
“Although Carter’s attorney assails Plaintiff’s lawyer as having a ‘chronic inability to follow the rules’,” the order continued, “Carter’s counsel has failed to abide by this Court’s clear rules.”
