Jay-Z and his legal team are trying every tactic in the book to get the rape case against him thrown out.
Source: Gilbert Flores / Getty
According to reports from Deadline, the Roc Nation head’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, filed new paperwork in relation to the ongoing rape case on Monday, December 30. His legal team seeks to challenge the lawsuit accusing Jay-Z of rape, claiming the alleged assault is said to have taken place months before a December 2000 law offering civil recourse for victims of gender-motivated violence came into effect.
This comes just a few days after a New York based federal judge refused the rapper’s efforts to have claims that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted a 13-year-old dismissed and the Jane Doe plaintiff unmasked. Since their efforts to get the case tossed already failed once, Jay-Z and his legal team are trying to use the calendar and geography to help them get the lawsuit tossed out.
“Plaintiff cannot recover for her sole claim under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act (the GMV Law), as a matter of law, because the statute does not have retroactive effect,” Spiro wrote in a letter to Judge Analisa Torres on Monday according to Deadline. “Plaintiff asserts a violation of the GMV Law for conduct that purportedly occurred in September 2000. But the GMV Law was not enacted until December 19, 2000, three months after the FAC claims the conduct occurred, and cannot apply retroactively to create a cause of action unavailable to Plaintiff at the time in question.”
Spiro and Jay-Z are doubling down on the timeline aspect of their argument, insisting that Jane Doe’s ability to take legal action “expired no later than August 2021.”
Referencing a now-dismissed sexual assault case from a minor that Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler was hit with in late 2023, Jay-Z’s legal team asserts that “any viable GMV Law claim is time-barred under New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA), which preempts Plaintiff’s GMV Law claim.” Noting the CVA actually was amended in 2019 with an addition 30 months, “the Courts in this District, however, have recognized that the CVA’s revival period preempts the GMV Law’s overlapping and extended one.”
The lawsuit in question, which was filled earlier this month, comes from a Jane Doe claiming she was raped by both Jay-Z and Diddy at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000, when she was 13. Both rappers have denied the allegations.
Last week, in court documents obtained by TMZ, Judge Torres ruled that Jane Doe can remain unnamed after Jay-Z’s lawyer filed to have the case dismissed and Doe’s identity revealed. However, the judge noted the circumstances could change as the case moves forward, intending to revisit the issue if and when the case progresses.
Jay-Z’s legal team is trying everything they can to keep that from happening.
