It’s a classic good news/bad news scenario for Sean “Diddy” Combs and his attorneys amid his arrest and detainment on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and more. TMZ reports that while the rapper and producer was sitting behind bars, a judge has thrown out — or more accurately, set aside — the recent $100 million default judgment awarded to Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Combs alleging sexual assault at a party back in the 1990s.
As previously reported, the judgment was made after Combs failed to respond to Cardello-Smith’s lawsuit or show up for the hearing. But another judge presiding over the case was swayed by one of Combs’s attorneys to set aside the judgment on the grounds that the lawsuit may not have been filed properly by Michigan law, the alleged assault having supposed to have taken place in Detroit.
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There is also the matter of the statute of limitations, legally relevant since the party where Cardello-Smith claims Combs assaulted him took place in 1997, but which the last judge to rule on the case didn’t remark upon. That led the judge to lift a restraining order on Combs, barring him from selling off property that could be put towards paying off the damages since he could very well end up winning the case on these grounds alone.
That’s all in the future, though, because the suit will reportedly proceed with Combs’s attorneys expected to file an appeal to dismiss. But Cardello-Smith made a somewhat dramatic statement to Combs lawyer David Fink in court indicating he’s not backing down:
“This isn’t over, Mr. Fink. Let Mr. Combs know that. This is not over!”
The decision was a rare bit of sunshine in Combs’s increasingly grim legal situation. He is not only facing other civil suits related to alleged sexual assaults, but he was recently arrested by federal authorities following the March raid on his mansion in Miami. He was denied bail by a judge who stated he could pose a flight risk or even interfere with the investigation if he was let out of custody.
