Jay-Z is suing the anonymous woman who in February withdrew a lawsuit accusing the rapper of rape, claiming that she and her lawyers knowingly proceeded with a false claim.
Jay-Z (AKA Shawn Carter) said that the woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the suit, admitted to his representatives that she had falsified her account of Jay-Z and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs raping her when she was 13, at an afterparty for the 2000 MTV Video Music awards. His suit, filed in Alabama, where she lives, names both the woman and her lawyers Tony Buzbee and David Fortney.
Lawyers for Jay-Z said that the woman “voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story”.
The woman admitted in an NBC News interview that she had “made some mistakes” in her allegations. She claimed her father picked her up after the alleged assault, but he did not recall doing so. She also claimed to have spoken to a musician at the after party who was on tour elsewhere at the time.
The new lawsuit brings a defamation claim against her as a result, accusing her of malicious prosecution. It states that Jay-Z suffered reputational damage and that his company Roc Nation lost more than $20m as a result.
Buzbee said in a statement that Jay-Z’s suit has “no legal merit”.
He claimed that the quotes attributed to her in the new lawsuit were “completely made up, or they spoke to someone who isn’t Jane Doe. This is just another attempt to intimidate and bully this poor woman that we will deal with in due course. We won’t be bullied or intimidated by frivolous cases.”
Buzbee is the subject of a prior lawsuit by Jay-Z, who last year accused the lawyer of demanding a “confidential mediation” tantamount to extortion regarding Jane Doe’s rape allegations. A judge mooted dismissing the extortion claim but allowing a defamation claim to proceed, but no decision has been made.
In a new affidavit in that case, the woman said she was approached at home in February by two people claiming to be investigators working with Jay-Z’s lawyer, and that she refused to sign papers recanting her allegations. She added that she had withdrawn her original suit out of fear of Jay-Z and his fans, and the likelihood that “I would have to be publicly named and subjected to public attacks”.
Source: theguardian.com
