Dr. Luke wants Lady Gaga to testify in his ongoing defamation suit against Kesha.
His attorneys have filed a motion to interview Gaga in person because "she has relevant information regarding, among other things, false statements about Dr. Luke made to her by Kesha." They stated in court documents filed Friday that they had made repeated requests to obtain a deposition date from Gaga but have been unsuccessful.
"Dr. Luke's counsel served a subpoena on Lady Gaga because she has relevant information regarding, among other things, false statements about Dr. Luke made to her by Kesha," one of Luke's attorneys said in a statement to E! News Saturday. "This motion has become necessary because Dr. Luke's counsel has not been able to obtain, despite repeated request, a deposition date from Lady Gaga."
"As Lady Gaga's legal team will present to the court, she has provided all of the relevant information in her possession and is at most an ancillary witness in this process," a representative for Gaga said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "Dr. Luke's team is attempting to manipulate the truth and draw press attention to their case by exaggerating Lady Gaga's role and falsely accusing her of dodging reasonable requests."
Kesha has not commented.
She had sued Luke (real name: Lukasz Gottwald) in 2014, claiming sexual assault and battery and seeking to invalidate her recording contracts with him. He filed a countersuit, accusing her of defamation. In 2016, she dropped her sexual abuse claims, while his defamation suit against her in New York continued.
In late December, court documents revealed that the judge received and sealed a text message Kesha had sent Gaga in 2016. They stated, "Gottwald may share with Lady Gaga and Katy Perry the April 2016 text that Kesha sent to Lady Gaga, which Kesha turned over in discovery."
Luke's attorneys claim in court documents that in 2016, Kesha "initiated a text message conversation" with Lady Gaga, in which Kesha "falsely asserted that Kesha and another female recording artist had both been raped" by Luke, accusations they call "false and baseless." The lawyers say Lady Gaga "joined Kesha's smear campaign" against Luke and spread negative messages about him in the press and over social media, which included her promotion of the "Free Kesha" campaign and "statements urging Sony Music to cut ties" with Luke.
Luke's lawyers stated in their documents filed Friday that they had subpoenaed Gaga in March asking her to give an oral testimony in a deposition. They said she submitted a "heavily-redacted, four page spreadsheet of the text messages," but redacted too much of the content.
Luke's attorneys said in their documents Friday that after Gaga was subpoenaed in March, they repeatedly asked her attorneys for her availability but that they maintained they could not provide a firm date for her deposition due to her "demanding tour and filming schedule."
Luke's attorneys say in the documents that they "seek to, and have the right to, cross-examine [Gaga] regarding the circumstances of her extensive relevant communications with Kesha, as well as regarding [Gaga]''s state of mind when she received the defamatory text messages from Kesha and issued public missives against [Luke] thereafter."
Gaga has voiced her support for Kesha publicly in the past but has never commented on the sexual assault claims.
In March, Gaga stood up for Kesha in a radio interview with Carson Daly.
"I feel like she's being very publicly shamed for something that happens in the music industry all the time, to women and men," she said. "I just want to stand by her side because I can't watch another woman that went through what I've been through suffer."