A New York judge dismissed most of Dawn Richard’s lawsuit against Sean Combs on June 15, ruling that the statute of limitations blocked her 18 claims and leaving only one path still open. The case was filed in 2024 and alleged an eight-year campaign of emotional abuse and violence.
The ruling matters now because it turns a federal complaint into a narrow state-court fight. Richard accused Combs of abuse that began during Making the Band and continued through Danity Kane and Diddy - Dirty Money, and her lawyers said death threats and duress kept her from acting sooner. Judge Katherine Polk Failla was not persuaded that the filing deadline could be waived, even though she acknowledged that the conduct was, in her words, “while indisputably odious — ceased in 2011 or 2012.”
Most of the case had already run out of time by more than a decade, which is why the judge’s ruling cut so deeply. The dismissed claims covered Richard’s allegations of disparaging gender-based remarks, food and sleep deprivation, withheld pay, and multiple alleged assaults and batteries. The court also rejected her dispute over compensation for Deliver Me, saying she and Combs were co-authors of the song and that she could not pursue copyright infringement against him.
One gender-motivated violence claim was dismissed without prejudice, which means it may be filed again in State Court in NYC. Richard’s attorney, Arick Fudali, said the allegations were execrable and that the team intended to continue fighting for her on that claim. Combs’ spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said Richard’s claims were purely fictional.
The legal fight now narrows to whether Richard can keep that final claim alive in state court and turn the judge’s ruling into a new filing rather than the end of the case. That question sits against a wider backdrop: Richard testified in the federal trial involving Combs and Cassie Ventura, Combs was cleared of racketeering and sex trafficking in that case, and he was sentenced to more than four years in prison on prostitution charges last October while he awaits an appeals court decision on his sentence.
