Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Tries Atlanta Lawyer’s Strategy to End Legal Trouble

A key defense argument in both cases is that the New York laws under which the plaintiffs filed their complaints do not apply retroactively to alleged conduct that occurred before the laws were enacted. Long-Daniels, who is not involved in the Combs cases, based part of Tyler’s defense on a clause in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits legislatures from passing laws that retroactively criminalize behavior.

“They basically took the strategy that we used and employed it,” Long-Daniels said of Combs’ team. “Courts are generally very reluctant to apply a law retroactively, especially when it has a significant impact on the rights of the accused. »

In dismissing the case against Tyler, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said April 26 that New York’s Gender-Based Violence Protection Act took effect in December 2000 and “does not purport not even be retroactive. A claim arising from conduct that occurred before December 2000 would not be “legally sufficient” under that law, Kaplan said.

New York law is the law under which Dickerson-Neal brought action in her case against Combs. Lawyers for Dickerson-Neal and Combs did not immediately respond to questions about their case and Kaplan’s decision.

Dickerson-Neal alleged that she had dinner with Combs at a Harlem restaurant, where he intentionally drugged her. She claimed he then took her to a residence in New York, where he sexually assaulted and filmed her.

In his motion to dismiss, Combs said the laws underlying Dickerson-Neal’s allegations “were enacted years after the 1991 conduct alleged in the complaint, and they cannot be applied retroactively to that alleged conduct.” in the absence of a clear legislative intention.

Long-Daniels, a partner at the firm Squire Patton Boggs, said Kaplan’s decision could be appealed by New Yorker Jeanne Bellino, who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Tyler in 1975, when she was 17 years old. Bellino’s attorneys did not immediately respond to questions about his case.

Credit: Winslow Townson/AP

Credit: Winslow Townson/AP

Both Bellino and Dickerson-Neal relied on New York laws with provisions to revive historic sexual abuse claims that otherwise would have lapsed. Some states adopted such laws after the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Violence Against Women Act in May 2000 and in the wake of the “#MeToo” movement denouncing sexual abuse.

Long-Daniels said his retroactivity argument in the civil case against Tyler was “somewhat novel” in that it applied a constitutional clause typically cited in criminal cases. He said he might use the same argument in a sexual abuse case filed against Tyler in California, which remains pending.

Long-Daniels said Kaplan’s ruling in favor of Tyler appeared to be the first time a judge had interpreted the relevant New York laws “as a whole” through the lens of retroactivity.

Kaplan also presided over sexual assault and defamation cases brought against former President Donald Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, both of which went to trial. Carroll claimed, under the recovery provisions of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, that Trump assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

In the case of Bellino v. Tyler, Kaplan said the Adult Survivors Act “applies only to damages caused by offenses against persons who were at least 18 years of age at the time of those offenses,” invalidating the claims of Bellino under this law.