According to the lawsuit, Dickerson-Neal, then a student at Syracuse University, met Combs during a break and “reluctantly agreed” to have dinner with him at a Harlem restaurant, saying he “pushed” her to keep him company after their meal.
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team is pushing back against his accusers in their civil suits as a federal sex-trafficking probe continues.
His lawyers are asking a New York court to throw out portions of a sexual assault lawsuit filed by attorneys for Joi Dickerson-Neal accusing the rapper of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1991, when she was 19.
The lawsuit alleges the assault was recorded and video footage was shared with Combs’ friends.
The lawyers are seeking to undermine the entire basis for the suit and asking that certain claims, including allegations of revenge porn and human trafficking, be dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can not be refiled.
Combs, they argued, cannot be sued in this instance because the relevant New York laws regarding revenge porn and human trafficking did not go into effect until decades after the alleged incident. The revenge porn law was enacted in 2019, while the trafficking law came on the books in 2007.
The filing comes on the heels of heavily armed Department of Homeland Security agents bursting into Combs’ Holmby Hills and Miami mansions on March 25 with search warrants and seizing paperwork and electronics as part of a sex trafficking investigation directed by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, according to law enforcement sources.
In a motion submitted Friday seeking to dismiss large chunks of the Dickerson-Neal suit, Combs’ attorneys labeled its accusations as “false, offensive, and salacious” and said they “vehemently deny, substantially all of the claims purportedly alleged.”
Lawyers also sought to strike portions of the lawsuit targeting Combs’ corporations because “the Company Defendants were not in existence at the time of the alleged conduct.”
