Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Legal Team Moves to Dismiss Certain Claims in 1991 Sexual Assault Lawsuit

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers have urged a New York judge to dismiss some claims made against him in a November sexual assault complaint, in which a woman accused him of drugging and raping her while she was a Syracuse University student in 1991.

Legal documents acquired by PEOPLE and filed by Combs’ attorneys on Friday, April 26, state that some of the charges “were brought under statutes that did not exist at the time the alleged misconduct occurred.” Specifically, the brief contends that revenge pornography and human trafficking are among the claims that should be dismissed with prejudice since the laws governing them did not exist when Joi Dickerson-Neal accused Diddy of sexual assault in 1991.

Combs previously rejected the allegations, claiming that Dickerson-Neal made up the account. As previously reported, Dickerson-Neal’s lawyers claimed she was the victim of “revenge porn” after the music mogul allegedly recorded the encounter and shared it with others in the music industry.

According to the November 2023 lawsuit, Combs took 19-year-old Dickerson-Neal to dinner at a Harlem restaurant in January 1991 and drove her to a recording studio, where she claims she was unable to exit the vehicle because Combs intentionally drugged her, “resulting in her being in a physical state where she could not independently stand or walk.” Combs allegedly then brought her to his residence and sexually raped her. According to the lawsuit, Combs recorded it, and her male companion “viewed the ‘ sex tape’ along with other men.”

The action also named Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy Records, and Combs Enterprises as defendants. It was filed one day before the New York Adult Survivors Act expired. Adult survivors of sexual assault might launch a lawsuit one year after the statute of limitations expired.

Combs’ lawyers now argue in the filing that because the New York State Revenge Porn Law was not codified until 2019 and the New York Services for Victims of Human Trafficking Law went into effect in 2007 — among other laws enacted after the alleged assault — the claims “cannot survive” the motion to dismiss.

Dickerson-Neal’s allegations were also described in the complaint as “false, offensive, and salacious.”

The lawsuit also asserts that claims against Bad Boy Entertainment and Combs Enterprises (the “company defendants”) “fail as a matter of law” since neither were “in existence at the time of the alleged conduct.” Combs created Bad Boy in 1993, and Combs Enterprises was supposedly established in 2013.

The complaint comes after Diddy was accused of sexual assault and other claims by five persons in different lawsuits over the last few months, all of which he has denied. A lawsuit was settled.