Smokey Robinson’s former housekeepers say they’d the fitting to carry a press convention publicizing an explosive rape lawsuit towards the Motown legend and are asking a decide to toss defamation counterclaims within the contentious authorized proceedings.
A movement filed Friday (June 20) takes situation with the countersuit Robinson filed after 4 nameless former housekeepers introduced a $50 million civil lawsuit accusing the 85-year-old singer of a yearslong sample of sexual assault.
Robinson and his spouse, who’s additionally named as a defendant within the housekeepers’ case, mentioned the rape allegations are fabricated and defamatory. Whereas claims in authorized filings are usually shielded from defamation lawsuits by the First Modification, the Robinsons argued the accusers stepped exterior these protections after they “paraded themselves in entrance of the media” with a press convention the day the lawsuit was filed.
The housekeepers’ legal professionals disagree. In Friday’s movement to strike the counterclaims, attorneys for the accusers say their press convention was really coated by the so-called litigation privilege and due to this fact can’t be the topic of defamation claims.
“The statements underlying the Robinsons’ claims, delivered by counsel for Jane Does throughout a press convention, concern a pending civil lawsuit involving critical allegations of sexual misconduct and are explicitly tied to that litigation,” write legal professionals John Harris and Herbert Hayden. “The Robinsons’ cross-complaint is completely with out benefit and seems to be a retaliatory and improper effort to relax the Jane Does’ proper to talk out and to entry the courts.”
Friday’s movement additionally criticizes the Robinsons for attempting to “mislead” the court docket by together with solely partial quotations from the press convention of their countersuit, together with a reference to Harris calling Robinson a “serial and sick rapist.” The housekeepers’ attorneys say Harris really mentioned, “We consider that Mr. Robinson is a serial and sick rapist” — an necessary qualifier that couches this assertion as an opinion and never a truth.
The housekeepers are asking a Los Angeles decide to strike the counterclaims underneath California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which clears the way in which for fast dismissal of defamation claims that threaten free speech. Underneath this regulation, the accusers can even make the Robinsons reimburse their authorized charges in the event that they win the anti-SLAPP movement.
The Robinsons’ legal professional, Christopher Frost, mentioned in an announcement to Billboard on Monday (June 23) that Friday’s movement is “all simply procedural posturing.”
“Whereas the regulation might permit them to make false and slanderous allegations in a criticism with impunity, it doesn’t permit them to orchestrate a press convention to regurgitate the identical lies,” mentioned Frost.
Frost mentioned the housekeepers’ “clear motivation” is to make use of the anti-SLAPP movement as a tactic to decelerate the litigation, echoing allegations in his personal court docket submitting final week that accused the ladies of trying to delay the invention course of.
“It’s puzzling to us why they’d wish to achieve this in the event that they actually believed of their case,” added Frost.