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P. Diddy's Good Judgment
It may be all about the Benjamins, and in this case, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs gets to hold on to nearly half a million's worth.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals on Tuesday shot down a civil judgment against Diddy that ordered him to fork over $450,000 in damages to a limo driver who claimed he was severely beaten by the hip-hopster's bodyguards at a 1995 Mary J. Blige concert.
The civil suit, filed by Cedrick Bobby Lemon, accused Combs' posse of going gangsta and beating down the driver after he refused to leave a restricted area near Blige's dressing room even though he had the proper backstage badge. The suit held Combs negligible for failing to train his goon squad properly when he loaned them out to Blige, whose career Diddy was managing at the time.
After Combs failed to answer the allegations in the complaint, either in writing or by turning up in court as required by law, Forsyth County Superior Court Judge William Z. Wood found in favor of Lemon in September 2002 and authorized a default judgment of $2.45 million against the entertainer. Two months later, however, Wood reversed himself and reduced the damages to $450,000.
But according to local news reports, the appeals court decided to overturn the fine entirely after determining that Lemon's case didn't meet the standards for a default judgment.
The award was intended to help cover the $14,400 in medical bills accrued by the Tar Heeler for injuries ranging from a broken right ankle to a bad back that allegedly kept him from performing his chauffeuring duties.
Calls to Lemon's attorney, Howard C. Jones, were not returned. But Jones told the Winston-Salem Journal that his client had not yet decided whether to appeal.
Diddy's camp has said that it didn't even know about the suit until the penalty was issued. And even then, the rapper's lawyer said, the allegations were bogus.
Even though he appears to be off the hook in the North Carolina case, Combs, currently holding down the boards in the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun, will still be racking up the legal bills.
He is facing a $50 million lawsuit filed last year by two men, one of whom claims to be a former childhood buddy, who say Combs' guards assaulted them.
Then there's a $5 million claim filed by a New York woman who accuses one of Diddy's disciples of manhandling her in front of the rapper's Manhattan restaurant.
And yet another suit comes from former friend and business partner Kirk Burrowes, who launched a $25 million breach-of-contract and racketeering claim alleging a baseball bat-wielding Combs stormed into Burrowes' office and threatened to make like Robert De Niro in The Untouchable unless Burrowes signed over his 25 percent stake in Bad Boy Entertainment.
Combs was also sued in 2001 by a Michigan talk-show host who claimed the rapper's pals roughed him up after an interview.
The rapper has proclaimed his innocence in each case.
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