In high-stakes lawsuit land, the courtroom floor can be as slippery as the Hollywood red carpet; Justin Combs and Cuba Gooding Jr. slipped right off it unscathed. A Los Angeles judge recently threw out the civil claims against both men in Lil Rod's still-unfolding explosive lawsuit against Diddy, but not because they cleared their names. Instead, it concerned botched deadlines, incorrect addresses, stinky-looking legal gamesmanship, and some profound learned helplessness.
The lawsuit, brought by Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones, had accused mostly of hideous behavior. That included Cuba Gooding Jr., who was named in a secondary amendment and charged with groping Lil Rod on a yacht in January 2023. The actor repeatedly attacked him without his consent and stopped only when Kocourek physically pushed him off, the complaint alleges.
Lil Rod, for his part, said that Justin Combs was caught in the shadows of the case, which included a sex trafficking ring and a shooting at Chalice Recording Studios in Los Angeles. He even claimed that either Justin or his father, Sean "Diddy" Combs, may have been personally involved in the shooting and that Diddy instructed Lil Rod to cover for Justin in his interview with the police.
But not in the court of law; the scales were not tipped by the gravity of these accusations but by procedure. The judge dismissed the claims against Justin Combs and Cuba Gooding Jr. due to one very embarrassing technicality: they were never properly served with the lawsuit. Tyrone Blackburn, Lil Rod's attorney, just missed the court's November 8, 2024 deadline and didn't even ask for an extension.
In Gooding Jr.'s case, Blackburn contended that the actor being in either New York or Florida "made it impossible for the plaintiff to serve him" outside of California before the deadline; he then failed to try to serve the actor in California before the case was dismissed. After receiving sketchy hotel-stay information, he reportedly blew off Florida altogether, and the one attempt he made in California came too late to register.
The first service address was incorrect, and although the correct address was filed two days before the deadline, it was too little but too late. That service complainer, quoted in The Post, then dodged a serving at his Hamptons home when the process server confirmed that Combs did live there but couldn't gain entry through a private gate. Although a security guard can achieve service under California law, the server did not exercise that option. Blackburn later attempted to scapegoat the process server, but the court didn't fall for it.
Ultimately, the judge found no reasonable cause to increase the original deadlines despite ruling against Blackburn's creative, though eventually doomed, attempt to serve the defendants by placing advertisements in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
At this moment, Combs and Gooding Jr. are not guilty. But when it comes to lawsuits like this, "dismissed" doesn't necessarily mean "done." The door to the courtroom is closed for now, but it may only swing right back open.
0 Comments