Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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      in Music

      Sean Combs Fights Lawsuit by Music Producer Alleging Sexual Misconduct

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      The hip-hop mogul’s lawyers are seeking the dismissal of a suit from Rodney Jones Jr., arguing it is baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”Lawyers for Sean Combs filed court papers on Monday seeking the dismissal of a civil suit by a music producer who accused Mr. Combs of making unwanted sexual contact, arguing that the lawsuit was baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”The filing, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, is the latest effort by the hip-hop impresario’s legal team to dismiss a series of recent lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault and misconduct. The suit by Rodney Jones Jr., a music producer who worked on Mr. Combs’s most recent album, accuses Mr. Combs of groping him and forcing him to solicit prostitutes; he also alleges that Mr. Combs threatened him with violence.In their response, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that Mr. Jones’s claims lack basic details, including where and when the alleged groping occurred, along with how, exactly, Mr. Combs pressured him into hiring prostitutes.“Such vague allegations fall well short of federal pleading standards,” wrote one of the lawyers, Erica A. Wolff, who argued that the real purpose of the lawsuit is to “generate media hype and exploit it to extract a settlement.”One threat of violence that the lawsuit alleges was that Mr. Combs once threatened to “eat Mr. Jones’s face,” but the exact context for the comment was unclear in Mr. Jones’s suit, a 98-page document that details a litany of allegations from his time as a part of Mr. Combs’s entourage.Mr. Jones’s lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, called the filing a “desperate Hail Mary attempt.”“Nothing in this complaint is far-fetched,” he said. “Nothing in this complaint is too vague.”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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      Anna Netrebko, Shunned in U.S. Over Putin Support, to Sing in Palm Beach

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      The star soprano, who lost work at American opera companies after Russia invaded Ukraine, will sing at a gala for Palm Beach Opera, her first American engagement since 2019.Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the superstar soprano Anna Netrebko has been persona non grata at cultural institutions in the United States, shunned for her past support of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.But in February, Ms. Netrebko will make her first appearance in the United States since 2019: She will perform in Florida at a gala concert at the Breakers Palm Beach hotel to benefit Palm Beach Opera, the company announced on Wednesday.Ms. Netrebko, one of the biggest stars in classical music, has in recent months returned to many top concert halls and opera houses in Paris, Milan, Berlin and elsewhere in Europe, prompting some protests but also winning ovations and strong reviews.But most American institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, where she reigned as a prima donna for two decades, have continued to refuse to engage her because of her past support for Mr. Putin and her unwillingness to criticize him now. Her last performance in the United States was before the pandemic, when she headlined a gala New Year’s Eve performance at the Met Opera.In a statement, Ms. Netrebko said she was looking forward to singing in Florida.“I am honored to be lending my voice to the Palm Beach Opera’s annual gala,” she said. “I am excited to spend time in this beautiful community.”James Barbato, who leads the Palm Beach Opera, said in a statement that Ms. Netrebko was “more than a great artist with a magnetic stage presence and a voice of breathtaking beauty and power.”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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      in Television

      Richard Gadd Says ‘Baby Reindeer’ Was ‘Emotionally True’ but ‘Fictionalized’

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      Richard Gadd, the show’s creator, said in a court filing that Fiona Harvey, who is suing Netflix for defamation, harassed him in real life but that the show is a dramatic retelling.After Netflix was sued by a woman who claimed that she inspired the stalker character on the hit series “Baby Reindeer,” the show’s creator, Richard Gadd, said in court papers filed Monday that he had been stalked by the woman in real life but that the series was a “fictionalized retelling.”In a declaration filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Mr. Gadd said that the woman, Fiona Harvey, harassed him in many of the same ways the character Martha stalks Mr. Gadd’s character, Donny, on “Baby Reindeer,” which claims to be “a true story.”Mr. Gadd said that in real life, Ms. Harvey visited him constantly at the bar where he worked and sent him “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters,” some which were sexually explicit or threatening. But he also argued that “Baby Reindeer” is “a dramatic work.”“It is not a documentary or an attempt at realism,” Mr. Gadd wrote in the filing. “While the Series is based on my life and real-life events and is, at its core, emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired. It is fictionalized, and is not intended to portray actual facts.”Mr. Gadd gave his declaration in support of a motion filed by Netflix seeking to dismiss the defamation lawsuit Ms. Harvey filed last month.Ms. Harvey claimed in the suit that the character Martha was based on her, and that the series defamed her by portraying the character as a convicted stalker who at one point sexually assaults the character played by Mr. Gadd. In her lawsuit, Ms. Harvey said she had never been convicted of a crime and had never sexually assaulted Mr. Gadd.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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      Michael Jackson Died With $500 Million in Debt

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      Jackson owed about $40 million to the tour promoter A.E.G. in 2009, his estate’s executors said in a court filing. They said all the debts have been eliminated.Michael Jackson’s debts and creditor’s claims at the time of his death in 2009 totaled more than $500 million, according to a court filing by the pop superstar’s estate that provides details of his financial woes toward the end of his life.Jackson owed about $40 million to the tour promoter A.E.G., according to the filing, which was made in Los Angeles County Superior Court this month and earlier reported by People magazine. The filing said that 65 creditors made claims against the singer after his death, some of which resulted in lawsuits, and that some of his debt had been “accruing interest at extremely high interest rates.”A representative for the Jackson estate, which is executed by John Branca and John McClain, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The estate filed the court papers as a request to authorize the payment of about $3.5 million to several legal firms for their work in the second half of 2018.In the court filing, the executors say that they have eliminated the estate’s debt and that almost all of the creditors’ claims and litigation have been resolved.Jackson earned hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the 1980s and 1990s as the creator of some of the biggest-selling albums of all time, along with dazzling concert tours that filled stadiums around the world. He bought the Beatles’ song catalog for $47.5 million in 1985 and later sold it to Sony/ATV Music in exchange for a 50 percent share in the company. Sony bought back the estate’s share for $750 million in 2016.But when Jackson died at the age of 50, shortly before he was supposed to embark on a tour called This Is It, he left behind a tangled web of assets and liabilities.Jackson was famous for his lavish lifestyle and spent money with abandon. He incurred millions of dollars in debt from his Neverland Ranch estate in Southern California and had a penchant for expensive art, jewelry and private jets. He was paying more than $30 million annually on interest payments, a forensic accountant testified during a 2013 wrongful-death trial in which A.E.G. prevailed.The Jackson estate is currently in a dispute with the I.R.S. after a tax audit. In a separate court filing this year, the estate said that the federal agency accused it of undervaluing its assets and said it owed “an additional $700 million in taxes and penalties.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      in Movies

      Alec Baldwin’s Long Journey to Court After ‘Rust’ Shooting

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      It’s been a challenge to follow the case. Here are its many twists and turns. The actor Alec Baldwin is scheduled to go on trial next month for involuntary manslaughter in Santa Fe, N.M.Baldwin’s long journey to the courtroom started on Oct. 21, 2021, on the set of the western movie “Rust,” when the gun he was holding while blocking out a shot discharged, firing a live round that injured the movie’s director, Joel Souza, and killed its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.It was an almost unimaginable tragedy, but Baldwin soon found himself in legal jeopardy, too. The subsequent saga has amounted to a high-stakes version of a familiar Baldwin ritual: He does or says something controversial; then, in an attempt to be understood, he doubles down on whatever he said or did, inviting further scrutiny; finally, feeling victimized and aggrieved, he vows to stop engaging with the media. He was in this third stage by the time I started reporting a few months ago. To trace the improbable arc of his prosecution, I interviewed more than 30 people in New York and Santa Fe, reviewed numerous public court filings, police records and videos, and obtained additional documents under New Mexico’s freedom-of-information act.It’s been a challenge to follow the case through all of its many twists and turns. Here’s what you need to know as the trial approaches.Troubling details quickly emerged about the film’s set.The shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe. 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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      The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial

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      On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for New Mexico’s First Judicial District, was driving along a lonely stretch of the mountain highway connecting Santa Fe and Taos when her cell service abruptly returned and her phone started pinging — message after message. She pulled over to the side of the road and began scrolling: Alec Baldwin had accidentally shot two people on a movie set in her jurisdiction. Carmack-Altwies had planned to spend the next couple of days alone in the mountains before celebrating her 43rd birthday with her wife, a retired investigator for the state, and their two children. Clearly that was not going to happen.Listen to this article, read by Pete SimonelliThe shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. that day at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe that had been rented out by “Rust,” an independent film that Baldwin was both starring in and producing. The bullet he inadvertently fired passed through the upper body of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and lodged near the spine of Joel Souza, the director. Souza was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Fe; Hutchins was airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque and died a short time later.Carmack-Altwies was nearing the end of her first year in office. She had been an assistant district attorney specializing in violent crimes when her boss made a bid for Congress. She ran to succeed him — her first foray into electoral politics — and won easily, inheriting a jurisdiction that covers three counties: Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic district, though the label connotes something very different in New Mexico, a rural hunting state whose voters tend to place a high value on the Second Amendment, than it does in, say, New York or California. Carmack-Altwies turned around and went back to her office in Santa Fe, where she spent most of the night on the phone with the local police, trying to make sure that the movie set, now a potential crime scene, was properly secured. In the days that followed, reporters from all over the world descended on Santa Fe. Carmack-Altwies held her first news conference about the incident six days later outside the Sheriff’s Department. She was asked if she intended to prosecute anyone. “I do not make rash decisions, and I do not rush to judgment,” she said. “All options are on the table at this point.”Bonanza Creek Ranch, the movie set where Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun in October 2021, leading to his indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter.Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA/AlamyWe 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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      Film Crew Veteran, Injured in an Accident, Faults Amazon for His Pain

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      The visual effects supervisor, hurt in one of three recent accidents on Amazon film sets, has sued, but the company says it is not to blame.In March 2023, the producers of Amazon’s holiday movie “Candy Cane Lane,” starring Eddie Murphy, were determined to set a 15-foot fir aflame for a scene, according to court papers filed in a recent lawsuit.But the weather was not cooperating, the court documents say. Producers had already canceled the shoot on several occasions because of rain and winds.Yet, on this day, production would press forward amid winds gusting up to 30 miles per hour, the court papers say.One intense gust sent a tent on the set flying into Jon Farhat, a visual effects supervisor. In the lawsuit he filed last fall, Mr. Farhat said the tent speared him in the back and threw him into the air “as if he was caught in a tornado.” He landed on the ground, unconscious.A video animation created by Jon Farhat shows a simulation of how he says he was injured on the set of the film “Candy Cane Lane.”Jon FarhatCut to 15 months later, and Mr. Farhat, 66, is still primarily bedridden in his home, unable to sit, unable to stand for more than an hour. He broke five vertebrae and two ribs. An ambulance is required to transport him to medical appointments, he said. And his struggle to recover has been made all the more frustrating, he says, by what he describes as a jumble of workers’ compensation red tape that has left him dissatisfied with his doctors and his pain management plan.Share your experience on film and TV sets.If you have worked in film or TV production, we want to hear from you. We won’t publish any part of your response without following up with you first, verifying your information and hearing back from you. We won’t share your contact information outside our newsroom or use it for any reason other than to get in touch with you.

      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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      Four Tops Singer Sues Hospital Over Being Put in Restraints

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      The lawsuit by Alexander Morris, who joined the group six years ago, said the staff thought he was “delusional” when he told them he was in the Motown band.A singer who joined the storied Motown group the Four Tops in 2018 sued a Michigan hospital on Monday, accusing its staff of placing him in restraints and ordering a psychological evaluation because they did not believe he was part of the band.The singer, Alexander Morris, who is Black, filed a lawsuit accusing Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital of racial discrimination and two employees of negligence for an incident in April 2023, when he was taken there by ambulance with chest pain and difficulty breathing.When Mr. Morris, 53, told hospital staff that he was a member of the Four Tops — which helped define the Motown Sound in the 1960s with hits such as “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There” — the staff “wrongfully assumed he was mentally ill” and a security guard was instructed to put him in restraints, the lawsuit alleges.When Mr. Morris offered to show his identification card, the lawsuit said, the security guard, who is white, told him to “sit his Black ass down.”“None of the nursing staff intervened to stop the racial discrimination and mistreatment,” said the lawsuit, which accused the staff of taking Mr. Morris, who had a history of heart problems, off oxygen while they pursued a psychiatric evaluation.The nonprofit health system that oversees the hospital, Ascension, released a statement in which it declined to comment on the pending litigation but said, “We do not condone racial discrimination of any kind.”The Four Tops has seen a rotation of replacement singers since its heyday. Its only surviving original member, Abdul Fakir, invited Mr. Morris to join the group in 2018 and he has been performing with them since 2019. At the time of Mr. Morris’s hospital visit last year, the lawsuit said, the Four Tops had been touring with another Motown jewel, the Temptations, and the group had recently performed at a Grammys charity event honoring Berry Gordy, Motown’s founder.Seeking to convince the hospital that he was not “delusional,” Mr. Morris’s lawsuit said, he showed a nurse a video of him performing at the Grammys event. Then the staff canceled the psychiatric evaluation, removed the restraints — which the suit said had been in place for about 90 minutes — and placed him back on oxygen.The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that after the ordeal, Mr. Morris was offered a $25 gift card to a supermarket, which he said he refused to accept.“The hospital denied my identity and my basic human dignity and then offered me a gift card,” Mr. Morris said in a statement provided by his lawyers. More