Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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    Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Gets Muted Release, Years After Fatal Shooting

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    The filmmakers said that they hoped the finished product would honor the work and memory of its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was shot and killed on the set.How do you plan the rollout of a film that became notorious for an on-set tragedy?The ill-fated western “Rust” has been trying to figure that out. The movie is finally being released on Friday, three and a half years after its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was shot and killed by a real bullet fired from an old-fashioned revolver that its star, Alec Baldwin, was rehearsing with on a set in New Mexico.Now that the film is finally coming out after years of lawsuits, investigations and two criminal trials, its rollout has been decidedly muted. Unable to find traction at better-known film festivals, “Rust” premiered last fall at a small cinematography festival in Poland. Now, as it is being released in a limited number of theaters (with none so far in New York City) and on demand, it is forgoing the traditional red-carpet premiere, and Mr. Baldwin has not sat for any splashy interviews.The filmmakers said that their overriding goal in finishing the film and pushing for its release was to showcase the final work of Ms. Hutchins, who was a 42-year-old up-and-coming cinematographer when she was killed. And a legal settlement calls for some of the film’s earnings to go to her husband and son.“If I was to make a direct plea to someone about seeing the movie,” said the film’s director, Joel Souza, “I’d say that a lot of really good people worked really hard on finishing this movie to honor her.”Mr. Souza was injured in the shooting by the bullet that killed Ms. Hutchins, which passed through her and lodged in his shoulder. He said that at first he doubted he would ever want to return to the movie business. But eventually a plan came together to finish “Rust,” with Mr. Souza back in the director’s chair.The plan not only had the blessing of Ms. Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, but it was at the heart of a settlement agreement he reached with the movie’s producers, including Mr. Baldwin, after he filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Path From Harlem to Stardom, and Now Federal Court

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      Jason Swain was on his way home to the Bronx when friends told him that something had happened to his brother at a charity basketball game in Harlem. Nine young people at a City College of New York gymnasium were crushed to death in an overcrowded stairwell. Dirk Swain, 21, was lying on the gym floor with a sheet draped over his body.The promoter of the December 1991 event was a 22-year-old novice music producer named Sean Combs.For more than six years, the Swains and other families pursued wrongful death suits, saying Mr. Combs had oversold the game, and that bad planning and inadequate security had led to the tragedy. By the time their cases were settled, Mr. Combs had skyrocketed from a junior record label employee to global superstardom; the $750,000 that he contributed to the $3.8 million in settlements represented a fraction of his wealth as hip-hop’s newest, flashiest mogul.Mr. Combs never accepted full responsibility for the deaths and, for many people, the stampede faded into history. But not for the families who lost their loved ones.“Every one of those nine people was doing something positive in their life,” Mr. Swain said in an interview.The City College incident was Mr. Combs’s first moment of notoriety, but far from his last. In the ensuing three decades, he has repeatedly faced allegations of violence or serious misconduct. The beating of a rival music executive. Gunshots fired in a nightclub. The threatening of a reality-TV cast member. An assault of a college football coach.If found guilty of all charges, Sean Combs, who has spent the last seven months in a Brooklyn jail, could spend the rest of his life in prison.Willy Sanjuan/Invision, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Soulja Boy Is Ordered to Pay $4 Million in Sexual Assault Case

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      The rapper, known for songs like “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” was found liable of assaulting a woman who said she was his assistant over two years.A jury in Los Angeles found the rapper Soulja Boy liable for sexual battery and assault, ordering him to pay $4 million to a woman who said that he became violent toward her as their once-professional relationship turned romantic, the woman’s lawyer said.The decision on Thursday, which was also reported by The Associated Press, came after a nearly monthlong trial, in which the woman said that she had started as the rapper’s assistant.She accused him of physically and sexually assaulting her over two years. Soulja Boy — known for songs like “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” and “Pretty Boy Swag” — denied the claims during the trial.“Our client is pleased with and vindicated by the verdict,” Neama Rahmani, a lawyer for the woman, whose name was not revealed in the proceedings, said in a statement. “Yesterday’s verdict is just the beginning of justice for Soulja Boy’s victims and a reckoning for the entire music industry.”Reading a statement on his phone, Soulja Boy, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, criticized the verdict outside the Superior Court in Los Angeles County after the verdict.“I believe this entire process has been tainted by a system that is not designed to protect the rights of the accused,” Mr. Way said. “I want to make it clear that I am innocent.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      James Toback Is Ordered to Pay $1.7 Billion in Sexual Assault Case

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      After the former Hollywood director stopped participating in the civil case against him, a jury awarded 40 accusers $42 million each.A jury in New York awarded $1.7 billion in damages to 40 women who sued the former movie director and writer James Toback over allegations of sexual assault, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.Mr. Toback, once a Hollywood fixture known for writing “Bugsy” and directing “The Pick-up Artist,” had been defending himself against the lawsuit for a couple of years but more recently had stopped participating in the case. He has denied the allegations against him.A judge entered a default judgment against him in January and a jury trial was held to determine how much money Mr. Toback would owe each plaintiff. On Wednesday, the jurors arrived at $42 million each, said Brad Beckworth, one of the lawyers who represents the women.Mr. Toback, 80, has described himself in court papers as being “financially destitute,” and it is unclear how much of the judgment he will be able to pay.The women’s allegations span from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s. Many of their accounts involve Mr. Toback approaching them in public, setting up meetings to discuss potential acting roles and then assaulting them at the meetings.Mr. Toback, who was accused in a Los Angeles Times article of being a serial harasser toward the start of the #MeToo movement in 2017, declined to comment in a text message on Thursday. He had been representing himself in court, including taking depositions of accusers himself. But he wrote in court papers last year that persistent health problems had made it difficult for him to keep up with the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Singer Sues Met Opera Over Firing for Post-Pregnancy Vocal Problems

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      The mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who suffered vocal problems during and after pregnancy, is suing the opera company — and the union that represented her — after she lost work.The Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was once one of opera’s most sought-after stars, renowned for stirring, powerful performances in works like Bizet’s “Carmen” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”But after she began experiencing vocal problems during pregnancy in 2021, her career suffered. When she returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, company officials later said, she did not sing up to her standard. The Met canceled her upcoming engagements, and she lost work at other opera companies.Now Rachvelishvili, 40, is suing both the Met and the union representing her, seeking more than $400,000 in compensation for lost work. In a complaint filed in late March, she accused the Met of breaching its contracts with her, and she said that her union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, had failed to properly represent her.Rachvelishvili’s lawsuit claimed that the Met had been aware that she had “suffered complications from her pregnancy and birth affecting her voice and vocal range.” The suit described her as being “disabled due to her pregnancy” and accused the opera company of discriminating against her.“I was shocked that I was not given a chance to recover and all of my contracts for the next two years were immediately canceled without pay,” she said in a statement.The Met said it could not comment on pending litigation.Her complaint argues that the Met should compensate her because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay contracted performers even if they later decide not to engage them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean Kingston and His Mother Are Convicted in $1 Million Fraud Scheme

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      Mr. Kingston, who is best known for his 2007 hit single “Beautiful Girls,” and his mother were charged with defrauding sellers of high-end vehicles, jewelry and other goods, prosecutors said.A jury in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., convicted the rapper Sean Kingston and his mother on Friday in a scheme involving more than $1 million worth of fraud, according to prosecutors.Mr. Kingston, 35, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, and his mother, Janice Turner, 62, both of Southwest Ranches, Fla., had been charged with five counts of wire fraud.They essentially took possession of high-end vehicles, jewelry and other goods by pretending to have paid for them through the use of fraudulent documents, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida.Each faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each count, prosecutors said. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in July.Ms. Turner, who testified during the trial, was taken into federal custody on Friday. Her lawyer, Humberto Dominguez, said on Saturday morning that they will appeal the verdict.Mr. Kingston, who did not testify, was allowed to post bond of a home valued at $500,000 and $200,000 in cash, but will remain in home detention with electronic monitoring. His lawyer, Zeljka Bozanic, said on Saturday that she was thankful that Mr. Kingston was allowed to remain out on bond but added that they will also file an appeal.As a 17-year-old, Mr. Kingston became known for his debut single, “Beautiful Girls,” which used a sample from Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.” It was ranked at No. 1 for four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2007.“He spent his childhood in Jamaica, which gave him his stage name and his command of patois,” the critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in The New York Times in 2007, “but his version of thug love (‘Girl, I know it’s rough, but come with me/We can take a trip to the ’hood’) makes it sound as if he’s trying too hard, or not hard enough.”Mr. Kingston’s home in Southwest Ranches, Fla., west of Fort Lauderdale.Amy Beth Bennett/The South Florida Sun Sentinel, via Associated PressAccording to prosecutors, Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner “unjustly enriched themselves” by falsely claiming that they had executed bank wire or other monetary transfers as payment for vehicles, jewelry and other high-end items when no such transfers had taken place.It added up to a property haul of more than $1 million, prosecutors said.Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner were accused of an “organized scheme to defraud” establishments, including a car dealership and a jeweler, of more than $50,000, according to arrest warrants for them.Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner were also accused of stealing a Cadillac Escalade from the dealership and $480,000 in jewelry from an individual, according to the warrants.Ms. Turner pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of bank fraud and filing fraudulent loan applications and was sentenced to 16 months in prison, according to court records. She was released in March 2007. More

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      Universal Music Calls Drake’s ‘Not Like Us’ Lawsuit ‘Misguided’

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      The label behind Drake and Kendrick Lamar filed a motion on Monday to dismiss Drake’s lawsuit, which accused it of defamation and harassment over the diss song.With the Drake takedown “Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar, now officially the most celebrated rap diss ever, the record label behind both artists is seeking to dismiss Drake’s defamation lawsuit, arguing that its lyrics are merely “a series of hyperbolic insults,” the lingua franca of any hip-hop feud.In a filing on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the company, known as UMG, provided its first substantial response to the lawsuit brought in January on behalf of Drake, the artist born Aubrey Drake Graham. He accused the label of defamation and harassment, claiming that Lamar’s track “intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”Last month, “Not Like Us,” which accuses Drake of liking young girls, among other personal attacks, won five Grammy Awards, including song and record of the year, and provided the centerpiece for Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance.According to UMG, Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated” and then “sued his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his wounds.” The label, citing in its filing lyrics by both artists tied to last year’s heavyweight fight, added that Drake had leveled “similarly incendiary attacks at Lamar” and that the tone and context of the back-and-forth made the defamation claim impossible to prove.The lawsuit, UMG said in its filing, “disregards the other Drake and Lamar diss tracks that surrounded ‘Not Like Us’ as well as the conventions of the diss track genre,” adding: “diss tracks are a popular and celebrated artform centered around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake’s suit were permitted to proceed.”In the suit, lawyers for Drake had argued that “Not Like Us” was beyond the pale of a typical rap beef because the song’s accusations were framed as fact — for instance, using as its cover art a map of Drake’s home with sex offender markers superimposed on top — and that it led to real world violence, citing a shooting at the residence days after the song’s release that injured a security guard, calling it “the 2024 equivalent of ‘Pizzagate.’” The claim also cited two other attempted trespassers in the days that followed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside the Sean ’Diddy’ Combs Hotline: The Makings of a Mass Tort

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      In a room full of cubicles, workers in headsets read from their computer screens, addressing callers who dialed a 1-800 number. They have a script.“Were you or your loved one sexually abused by Sean ‘Love’ Combs, known as Diddy, Puff Daddy and P. Diddy?”“If the abuse occurred at a party, please list the name of the party. What kind of party was it?”Their employer, Reciprocity Industries, is a legal services company located in a low-slung building in Billings, Mont., more than 2,000 miles from the Brooklyn jail where Mr. Combs awaits trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.For years, the company has helped seed litigation by fielding complaints from people hurt by natural disasters, weedkillers or abusive clergy.Now it’s the central collection point for sexual assault allegations against Mr. Combs.When a call related to Mr. Combs comes in, Reciprocity employees walk callers through a questionnaire that asks them to share the details of their complaints, including potential witnesses.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesSome complaints come in through the phone, others arrive online in response to ads promoted on Facebook and Instagram. (A news conference where a backdrop displayed the hotline in large red numbers made headlines last October.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Theaters Sue the N.E.A. Over Trump’s ‘Gender Ideology’ Order

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      The lawsuit seeks to block a new rule that requires groups applying for grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to agree not to promote “gender ideology.”Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday, challenging its new requirement that grant applicants agree to comply with President Trump’s executive orders by promising not to promote “gender ideology.”The groups that filed the suit have made or supported art about transgender and nonbinary people, and have received N.E.A. funding in the past. They say the new requirement unconstitutionally threatens their eligibility for future grants.“Because they seek to affirm transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences in the projects for which they seek funding, plaintiffs are effectively barred by the ‘gender ideology’ certification and prohibition from receiving N.E.A. grants on artistic merit and excellence grounds,” the lawsuit says.The groups are being represented in the litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said in the lawsuit that the N.E.A. rule “has sowed chaos in the funding of arts projects across the United States.” After Mr. Trump began his second term, the N.E.A. said it would require grant applicants to agree “that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” which Mr. Trump said in an executive order includes “the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”The N.E.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The suit was filed in a federal court in Rhode Island on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts, which promotes art made by Latinos; the Theater Offensive, an organization in Boston that presents work “by, for and about queer and trans people of color”; and National Queer Theater, a New York company best known for its Criminal Queerness Festival, which presents the work of international artists with roots in countries where their sexuality is criminalized or censored.“The N.E.A. has been a very robust supporter of ours,” said Adam Odsess-Rubin, the founding artistic director of National Queer Theater, which received $20,000 from the N.E.A. in 2023, $25,000 in 2024, and has been scheduled to receive $20,000 this year. “It’s ironic for us to be asked to check a box saying we won’t promote gender ideology; it doesn’t make sense to us; it’s not clear how it serves the American public at all, and, frankly, it’s discriminatory.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More