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JAY-Z's legal team believes the allegations against the veteran rapper and entrepreneur have exceeded the statute of limitations.
According to a report Rolling Stone published on Monday, December 30, Alex Spiro filed new paperwork in which he argued Jane Doe's claims fall just outside the window of New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act (GMVA). In his letter to the court, Spiro stated that Doe's allegations occurred three months before the GMVA was established.
“[The GMVA] cannot apply retroactively to create a cause of action unavailable to plaintiff at the time in question,” Spiro wrote. “A contrary conclusion would violate both state and federal due process protections.”
Spiro cited an instance where a federal judge in the Southern District of New York axed a lawsuit former child model Jeanne Bellino filed against Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler. She alleged Tyler sexually assaulted her in Manhattan when she was 17 and he was 27. The judge tossed out the lawsuit because Bellino's attorneys tried to use the GMVA window for the alleged 1975 rape after they missed the August 2021 deadline to file claims under New York’s Child Victims Act. Jane Doe's attorney Tony Buzbee also cited the window when he filed the lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs in October.
Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter was named in Jane Doe's lawsuit two months after the lawsuit was filed. She claimed both Combs and Carter raped her at an after-party in New York City following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000. The Roc Nation founder denied the allegations and accused Buzbee of extortion in a separate lawsuit. After Jane Doe acknowledged "mistakes" in her story, Carter's legal team motioned to force Jane Doe to reveal herself and requested to remove him from the lawsuit. U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres denied the request and allowed Jane Doe to proceed anonymously for now.
Spiro also withdrew his request for an “order for the preservation of evidence." In a second letter to Judge Torres, JAY-Z's lawyer said he had already sent the request directly to Buzbee so the court does not have to get involved. Buzbee reacted to Spiro's latest motion and told Rolling Stone, "Mr. Spiro likes to send a lot of letters. I don’t think any of them merit comment."