Jay-Z’s lawyer argues rape allegation is too old to pursue
Latest efforts by rapper’s lawyer come after a judge rejected attempts to have the plaintiff’s anonymity lifted
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Your support makes all the difference.Jay-Z is continuing to battle the rape allegations made against him, days after a judge refused his request to have the case thrown out.
New York-based federal judge Analisa Torres ruled on Thursday (26 December) that the Alabama woman who claims she was raped by Jay-Z and fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs when she was 13 could proceed anonymously.
She also chastised the lawyer representing Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, for what she described as combative motions and “inflammatory language” against the plaintiff’s lawyer.
Deadline reports that Jay-Z and his attorney, Alex Spiro, are now further disputing the timeline aspect of the allegations by claiming that the plaintiff, referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, lost her ability to file legal action “no later than August 2021”.
Spiro argues that “any viable [Gender-Motivated Violence] Law claim is time-barred under New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA), which preempts Plaintiff’s GMV Law claim,” in a two-page letter to Judge Torres on Monday (30 December).
Noting that the CVA was amended in 2019 with an additional 30 months, he continues: “The courts in this District, however, have recognised that the CVA’s revival period preempts the GMV Law’s overlapping and extended one”. Spiro’s point is that Jane Doe and her lawyer Tony Buzbee are three years too late with their lawsuit.
Jane Doe’s amended lawsuit alleged that she was raped by Jay-Z and Combs at an after-party for the MTV Music Awards, after befriending a limo driver outside the ceremony who drove her there.
She said she travelled to New York after sneaking out of a window of her home in Rochester and hitching a ride from a friend, who has since died.
Following the alleged rape, she claimed that she fled the house and called her father from a nearby gas station, asking him to come and collect her. Her father has said he does not recall driving from Rochester to pick her up in New York City.
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Spiro previously said that the woman’s claim relies on an “impossible timeline” and a nonexistent location, which she has described as a “large white residence with a U-shaped driveway”.
“It’s not just that this story is a lie and that it’s not true, it’s provably, demonstrably false,” Spiro told reporters in a press briefing on Monday 16 December. “This never happened.”
Torres wrote in her order last week that Spiro, who has been on the case less than three weeks, 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.”
Referring to Jay-Z by his legal last name, the judge added: “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. The Court will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it.”
Spiro has not yet responded to The Independent’s request for comment.