Dr. Luke Claims Kesha Falsely Told Lady Gaga He Raped Another Artist
The legal battle between Kesha and Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald has reached another contentious phase, and now Lady Gaga is involved. The producer and pop star have been ensnared in a New York court case since 2014, with Dr. Luke suing Kesha for defamation and Kesha countersuing based on her assertions of rape and other abuse. In a new court filing, Dr. Luke alleges that Kesha sent Lady Gaga text messages last winter saying that Luke raped both Kesha and another female recording artist. Luke claims that this text conversation caused Gaga to further ruin Luke’s reputation in the media.
According to Dr. Luke’s amended complaint, the Kesha/Gaga texts occurred on February 26, 2016. “During this text message conversation, Kesha falsely and basely asserted that Kesha and another female recording artist … had both been raped by [Dr. Luke],” the complaint states. “Kesha’s assertions to Lady Gaga were completely false.” Dr. Luke “did not rape Kesha, and he did not rape the other recording artist,” according to the complaint. “Kesha was (and is) well aware Gottwald never raped Kesha. Kesha has no basis or justification whatsoever to falsely assert that Gottwald raped the other recording artist.”
The complaint continues:
Since this text message conversation, Lady Gaga has spread negative messages about Gottwald in the press. Indeed, Lady Gaga has gone so far as to suggest during a radio interview that she possesses secret information regarding Gottwald that is damaging to him. Lady Gaga’s statements during this radio interview were thereafter repeated and spread widely by many international media outlets.
And later:
Kesha did not have any economic motivation for making these false assertions to Lady Gaga. Rather, Kesha made these statements as revenge for losing her injunction motion and for the purpose of furthering her malicious plan to destroy Plaintiffs. As Lady Gaga observed in this text message conversation, “it will NOT [b]e easy for” her [i.e., the other recording artist] or any artist to work w[ith] him [i.e. Gottwald] after this.
Kesha, in her own amended counterclaims, alleges that Dr. Luke’s case against her “is not about money or business. It is a vendetta against Kesha.” Her counterclaims state: “You can get a divorce from an abusive spouse. You can dissolve a partnership if the relationship becomes irreconcilable. The same opportunity—to be liberated from the physical, emotional, and financial bondage of a destructive relationship—should be available to a recording artist.”
She further claims that if Dr. Luke succeeds in winning tens of millions of dollars in damages from Kesha and her mother, “Kesha and her mother would be penniless.” The counterclaims also state that Sony’s contract with Dr. Luke “purportedly ends” in March 2017. “Without the court’s intervention and Sony’s facilitation, Kesha will remain contractually bound to Dr. Luke until she releases three additional albums, each containing six songs produced individually by Dr. Luke, no matter how many years that takes,” according the complaint.
Lawyers for Kesha and Dr. Luke have a busy month ahead. The judge has scheduled Kesha to appear for a deposition on February 7. Dr. Luke is set for his own deposition on February 14. A telephone conference with the judge is slated for February 21.
A lawyer for Kesha declined to comment to Pitchfork at this time.
Christine Lepera, a lawyer for Dr. Luke, told Pitchfork in a statement: “Dr. Luke seeks to add an additional defamation claim against Kesha based upon the discovery of another false and defamatory statement she made about him that was part of her calculated effort to harm his reputation and business. Kesha’s new proposed counterclaim simply repeats the meritless and untrue allegations that were set forth in her earlier pleadings and which Dr. Luke fully disputes.”
Let’s recap:
In October 2014, Kesha sued Dr. Luke in California, accusing him of rape and other abuse. The same month, Dr. Luke sued Kesha in New York for defamation; he also sued her mother. Fast-forward to February 2016, when the New York judge denied Kesha a preliminary injunction that would have allowed her to sign to a label other than Dr. Luke’s Sony Music imprint Kemosabe Records while the case unfolded. (Kesha appealed.)
Last April, the same judge dismissed most of Kesha’s counterclaims against Dr. Luke. In May, Kesha overhauled her legal team, and she has since dropped the California suit. Meanwhile, Kesha’s mother has been facing libel claims from Dr. Luke in Tennessee.
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