The federal trial of Sean Combs ended on Wednesday with the media mogul acquitted on the most serious charges, but while Mr. Combs remains in jail and awaits sentencing for charges of transporting prostitutes, he also faces ongoing civil lawsuits.
There are more than 50 lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse, the majority of which are based in New York. The accusations date as far back as the 1990s and include allegations of druggings and rapes, often at parties. The plaintiffs are a mix of men and women, and at least a dozen say Mr. Combs sexually assaulted them when they were minors. Many of the suits were filed anonymously.
In a statement following the verdict, Erica Wolff, a civil lawyer who represents Mr. Combs, said the outcome helped prove “what we have been saying about the civil cases since day one: they are all fabricated attempts to extort windfall payments from an innocent man.”
“Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone,” she said. “From the beginning, we have vigorously defended against the civil plaintiffs’ made-up claims with full confidence that Mr. Combs would prevail in the criminal case, and he did.”
But now the question becomes whether evidence from the criminal case could find a way into the civil suits in ways that could affect their outcomes. Mr. Combs was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy during the criminal trial, but he was found to have engaged in transportation to move escorts over state lines for the purposes of prostitution.
Still, there was a lot of testimony that he was repeatedly violent to a former girlfriend and used drugs in sexual situations.
“Everybody’s going to know he’s a pretty violent person,” said Thomas Giuffra, a trial lawyer who represents three anonymous plaintiffs in lawsuits against Mr. Combs. “Nobody is going to walk away from this thinking Sean Combs is a choir boy.”
But lawyers would not be able to readily introduce testimony from the criminal trial into a civil case. They would need, instead, to have the same witnesses testify again in the civil matter, assuming the presiding judge deemed it relevant, said Gary Becker, a criminal defense attorney. If the testimony differed, there could be an opportunity to use the transcript from the criminal trial in an effort to impeach the witness.
Mr. Combs’s civil lawyers have been fighting each of the suits individually, calling them false and legally barred.
The narratives in the majority of the lawsuits diverge from what was presented in the criminal case, which centered on two women who had been in long-term relationships with Mr. Combs and a third who had worked for him. Many of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits said they were not in relationships with Mr. Combs, and the trial did not involve allegations that he sexually abused men or anyone underage, as some of the civil suits contend.
“Mr. Combs will not back down,” Ms. Wolff said in the statement. “We will fight each and every civil case for as long as necessary to win his full vindication.”
Several of the lawsuits that are pending against Mr. Combs were filed in the aftermath of the one submitted by his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura. She sued in November 2023, accusing him of sexual abuse over about a decade. The suit was quickly settled, with Mr. Combs agreeing to pay $20 million. By the end of 2023, three more women had sued Mr. Combs over allegations of sexual assault.
One, Joi Dickerson-Neal, accused Mr. Combs of drugging and raping her during an evening out in New York in 1991, when she was a college student. In court papers, Mr. Combs’s lawyers described the allegations as false and salacious.
Another plaintiff accused Mr. Combs and two other men of gang-raping her in a New York recording studio more than 20 years ago, when she was 17 years old. Mr. Combs categorically denied what he called a “decades-old tale” in court papers.
The plaintiff initially filed the lawsuit anonymously, but she revealed her name — Anna Kane — after a judge ruled that she needed to do so for her case to proceed. Ms. Kane is the ex-wife of a professional hockey player, Evander Kane.
At the beginning of 2024, Rodney Jones Jr., a music producer who is known as Lil Rod and worked for Mr. Combs, filed a lawsuit against his former boss. Mr. Jones accused Mr. Combs in the suit of making unwanted sexual contact with him, as well as forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them. Mr. Combs’s lawyer said Mr. Jones was “shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”
An indictment triggers another wave
By the time Mr. Combs was arrested in September 2024, he was facing eight lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. After he was indicted — and ordered held in a Brooklyn jail — the lawsuits came much quicker.
One plaintiff who filed suit shortly after his arrest, Thalia Graves, accused Mr. Combs of drugging and raping her at his recording studio in Manhattan in 2001 — an accusation that his lawyers have said is false.
A huge wave of lawsuits followed. Most of them were filed by a Houston lawyer named Tony Buzbee, who teamed up with a business in Montana that used social media advertising and a 1-800 number to find plaintiffs with allegations against Mr. Combs.
Mr. Buzbee has filed around 40 lawsuits against Mr. Combs. Some follow a similar pattern: a drink at a party, unusual wooziness and a sexual assault. All were initially filed anonymously, though some plaintiffs have revealed their names after judges required it to proceed.
Mr. Combs’s lawyers have criticized Mr. Buzbee’s tactics — including by calling him a “1-800 attorney” — and have said the deluge of suits is not evidence of guilt, only proof that some people will seek financial settlements from a wealthy celebrity. At least one of the suits was withdrawn, and at least one other was dismissed after the anonymous plaintiff did not provide her name.
This year, Mr. Combs filed two of his own civil suits: one alleging defamation over a documentary about him and another over unsubstantiated claims about compromising sex tapes.
As a legal deadline approached, more suits were filed
Most of the lawsuits against Mr. Combs were filed under a New York City law, called the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, that was first adopted in 2000. In 2022, an amendment established a two-year window in which plaintiffs could sue over allegations of sexual abuse that would typically be barred because of the statute of limitations.
That window closed at the start of March 2025, and the numbers of filings against Mr. Combs surged in the days leading up to the deadline.
In one, a woman named Kendra Haffoney said that she was raped by Mr. Combs around 2008, while she was a contestant on VH1’s “I Want to Work for Diddy,” a show in which aspiring assistants tried to land a job with Mr. Combs.
In another suit, a man named Justin Gooch said that in 1999, when he was 16, Mr. Combs gave him Ecstasy and alcohol in a Manhattan club, then raped him in the bathroom.
In response to those suits, Mr. Combs’s lawyers called the allegations false, writing in a statement that “we live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason.”
Defense lawyers have challenged the use of the New York amendment to revive older sexual abuse claims, and some suits are on pause as the issue is considered by an appellate court. A decision by the court will determine whether the vast majority of cases based on the older accusations against Mr. Combs can survive.
Ben Sisario contributed reporting.
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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