A federal judge has thrown out five of the nine claims filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs in the $30 million civil lawsuit brought by producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, while also issuing a sharp warning to Jones’ attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, over his courtroom conduct.
The order, issued by Judge J. Paul Oetken of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, dismissed claims including RICO, breach of contract, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and two separate counts of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court also tossed a trafficking claim against Combs Global, one of the business entities named in the suit.
In the ruling, the judge criticized Jones’ attempt to frame the allegations as a racketeering case, writing that he had failed to properly argue the point and noting, “Jones fails to address any of these arguments in his opposition brief, and while the Court prefers to decide issues on the merits, it should not be necessary to root around a 402-paragraph complaint to contrive novel arguments on Jones’s behalf.”
“Jones’s effort to convert a ‘garden variety… breach of contract case[]’ into a RICO suit therefore fails,” the judge added.
The court also took the unusual step of calling out Blackburn by name in a section titled “Warning to Counsel.” Judge Oetken slammed the attorney’s filings as “replete with inaccurate statements of law, conclusory accusations, and inappropriate ad hominem attacks on opposing counsel,” and called one legal claim “not just disturbing, but shocking.”
While the judge allowed several claims to proceed, he clarified that no evidentiary findings have been made, and emphasized the low standard required at this early stage. “Jones’s allegations… need only be plausible, not probable,” he wrote.
Jones originally filed the lawsuit last February, claiming Diddy had sexually harassed and assaulted him over a period of more than a year, and that he possessed hundreds of hours of video allegedly showing the music mogul and his associates engaging in illegal activity. Jones also alleged that he was assaulted by other celebrities close to Combs and that the defendants had violated the RICO Act through a web of criminal misconduct tied to Diddy’s music and media empire.
Despite the partial dismissal, the court’s decision leaves some of Jones’ more serious allegations intact as the case moves into the next phase. However, the judge made it clear: both sides, especially Jones’ legal team, will be under close scrutiny moving forward.
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