Appeals court has 99 problems with Jay-Z’s extortion lawsuit against attorney

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Daniel Hopfer · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A California appellate panel upheld dismissal of Jay-Z's extortion and defamation lawsuit against attorney Tony Buzbee, ruling that Buzbee's demand letters threatening rape accusations against the rapper were protected by litigation privilege. The court found no evidence Buzbee knew the accusations were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

The dispute stemmed from Buzbee's representation of two anonymous clients who threatened to sue Jay-Z over decades-old rape allegations tied to the broader Sean Combs scandal; one accuser did file suit before dropping it two months later. A lower court had already found the demand letters didn't qualify as extortion and that Buzbee's public comments only vaguely referenced unnamed celebrities.

Buzbee said he will now seek to recover his legal costs from Jay-Z, calling the lawsuit meritless from the start. Jay-Z's attorneys have not commented on the ruling.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Courts have their own vocabulary for things that would get an ordinary person arrested, and 'litigation privilege' is doing a lot of work here. A demand letter with a deadline and a dollar figure looks a certain way to most people, whatever the legal label. Now somebody's going to write a check for the other side's lawyers, which has a way of settling arguments all on its own.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Look Busy · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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