Kesha Suffers One other Defeat In Dr. Luke Defamation Case

Kesha is dealing with one other setback in Dr. Luke’s long-running defamation lawsuit in opposition to her, after a New York court docket dominated that the pop star can not present jurors handwritten notes from 2006 that her attorneys have known as “important proof” to her protection.

Kesha’s attorneys say the notes, penned by considered one of her former attorneys, present key proof that she didn’t fabricate a narrative that Dr. Luke drugged her after a celebration – the central declare of his defamation lawsuit. However a decide dominated in October that she waited far too lengthy to introduce them into proof.

On Thursday (April 14), a New York state appeals court docket affirmed that ruling, ruling it will be unfair to Dr. Luke to permit Kesha not cite a doc that she by no means launched throughout “4 years of in depth discovery” and introduced forth two years after the deadline to take action.

The brand new setback for Kesha got here a month after the identical court docket dominated Dr. Luke’s case wasn’t coated by New York’s new free speech statute, which might have made it a lot tougher for him to win his case. A trial is presently set for early subsequent yr, however might be pushed again by additional appeals.

Dr. Luke, whose full identify is Lukasz Gottwald, filed his lawsuit in opposition to Kesha in 2014, claiming she had legally defamed him with a “false and surprising” allegation that he drugged and raped her after a 2005 celebration. He claimed she did in order leverage to safe a extra profitable deal.

Years into the case, Kesha’s attorneys found handwritten notes taken in 2006 by Gregory Clarick, an legal professional who represented Kesha in a earlier conflict with Dr. Luke. The notes purportedly confirmed that Kesha had disclosed to Clarick an incident wherein Dr. Luke gave her a capsule that precipitated her to black out on the evening she claims he raped her.

However in October, the trial decide overseeing Dr. Luke’s case refused to permit Clarick’s notes into proof. She dominated that the notes had by no means been disclosed throughout “years of voluminous doc discovery and all through dozens of depositions” and that Dr. Luke may need adopted a distinct technique if they’d been. “Discovery deadlines are meant to stop precisely this,” the decide wrote.

On attraction, Kesha’s attorneys argued that banning such “important proof” from trial would primarily quantity to a miscarriage of justice.

“If … Kesha is pressured to defend herself whereas pretending these notes don’t exist, she shall be enormously prejudiced,” they wrote. “Nor would the general public curiosity within the truth-seeking course of be served by such a charade.”

Firing again, Dr. Luke’s attorneys mentioned the notes had been correctly barred – and that Kesha’s attorneys had “grossly mischaracterized” their significance to the case.

“Removed from being ‘important’ proof, the … notes are terribly unreliable, containing a number of ranges of rumour,” Dr. Luke’s attorneys wrote. “They include no accusation of rape, regardless of that accusation being the central part of [Kesha]’s defamatory marketing campaign.”

In Thursday’s ruling, the appeals court docket sided with Dr. Luke and in opposition to Kesha. It dominated that the trial decide had “providently exercised its discretion” in refusing to confess the notes, because the “belated disclosure” of such proof would have unfairly harmed Dr. Luke’s potential to argue his case.

Following the ruling, neither aspect’s attorneys instantly returned requests for remark from Billboard.