Tony Buzbee beat Jay-Z in a California appeals court on September 9, but the Houston lawyer has taken a string of losses in the Diddy accuser cases he filed, and a Texas judge threw out his own lawsuits against Roc Nation in June.
The appeals court affirmed the dismissal of Jay-Z’s extortion and defamation suit against Buzbee and his firm. Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, sued in November 2024 after Buzbee sent his lawyers demand letters proposing confidential mediation over sexual assault allegations and warning that a lawsuit would follow if he refused. Jay-Z publicly called the letter a blackmail attempt. The panel ruled unanimously that the letters were protected legal communications, not extortion. On the defamation claim, the court applied the standard for public figures, which required Carter to show Buzbee knew his public statements were false or seriously doubted them. The court found that Buzbee’s sworn statements about the investigation he did before believing the claims undercut that argument.
That ruling upheld a June 2025 decision by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Epstein, who dismissed the case under California’s anti-SLAPP law. An anti-SLAPP law lets a judge quickly throw out a lawsuit seen as an attempt to punish someone for speech. Buzbee said at the time that he would seek attorneys’ fees.
The fight started with a federal lawsuit in New York filed by Buzbee’s firm for a Jane Doe, accusing Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl at a 2000 MTV Video Music Awards afterparty. Jay-Z denied it. Doe dismissed the suit in February 2025 with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled, and no court ever ruled on whether her claims were true.
Buzbee then went on offense in Texas. In December 2024, his firm sued Roc Nation, the law firm Quinn Emanuel, and attorney Marcy Croft in Harris County, claiming they used “shadowy operatives” and financial incentives to get his former clients to file lawsuits against him. In June 2026, Judge Kristen Hawkins dismissed all of it. Reports say she ruled that Texas lacked personal jurisdiction, which means the Texas court had no legal authority over the defendants. The ruling did not weigh the accusations themselves. Buzbee told TMZ, “We will definitely appeal.”
The Diddy docket has been rougher. Buzbee said in late 2024 that he represented more than 100 people in lawsuits against Combs. In March 2025, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams ordered him to explain why he never told the court he was not admitted to practice in the Southern District of New York, the federal court covering Manhattan. Buzbee withdrew from that case and more than a dozen other federal cases he had filed against Combs. He wrote that he “made an error in judgment” and has pointed the finger at Jay-Z, saying the rapper filed a grievance against him. His clients in at least one case stayed on with the New York firm Curis Law.
The first dismissal of a Buzbee client’s case came on March 31, 2025. Judge Lewis Liman tossed a lawsuit from a woman who accused Combs of attempted rape at a 1995 party. She filed in October 2024 under the name Jane Doe. Liman denied her request to stay anonymous on March 6 and gave her until March 20 to refile under her real name. She never did. Buzbee said she chose not to go forward and that he could not blame her, citing fear among his clients. The judge’s order did not decide whether her story was true. Combs’s attorneys responded in a statement that anonymous filings were being pushed by lawyers more focused on headlines than legal merit.
Another loss came on August 26, 2025. A New York judge, Leslie Stroth, dismissed a John Doe’s lawsuit alleging Combs drugged and assaulted him in 2015 when he was 23 and performing at a Los Angeles nightclub. The statute of limitations had run out. A statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a lawsuit over an alleged act. New York extended its deadline for this kind of claim to 20 years in 2019, but courts have held the change does not reach back to older incidents. The claims against Combs’s companies, Bad Boy Entertainment and Combs Enterprises, were dismissed too. Buzbee has said the case is far from over.
Jay-Z’s own fight with Buzbee is also not finished. A federal suit Jay-Z filed accusing Buzbee, the Alabama woman, and others of malicious prosecution and abuse of process was moved from Alabama to the Southern District of New York in March 2026, and motions to dismiss are still pending.
