• Macy's wants a judge to remove it from a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs.
• The suit says Macy's violated a gender-violence law by ignoring an attack at the Herald Square store.
• The plaintiff himself describes Diddy as "an equal opportunity sexual predator," Macy's argues.

Macy's wants to be removed as a defendant in a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs — and their arguments for dismissal include calling the rap entrepreneur "an equal opportunity sexual predator."

The October lawsuit accuses Macy's of violating a New York City gender-violence law by covering up an alleged attack by Combs on a male employee at the Herald Square flagship store in 2008.

The worldwide department chain argues the plaintiff, only identified as John Doe, cannot accuse Macy's of gender bias because, in the very same lawsuit, Doe himself describes Combs as willing to attack both men and women.

"Plaintiff's own allegations establish not only that this was a same-sex assault, but that Mr. Combs sexually assaulted both men and women, without regard to gender," the Macy's lawyers argued in court papers last week.

"Plaintiff does not address the fact that his own allegations establish that Mr. Combs was an equal opportunity sexual predator."

A spokesperson for Combs declined to comment on Macy's argument, instead referring BI to his own motion to dismiss the case against himself and his companies, filed Tuesday.

His motion also challenges the applicability of New York's gender-violence law. Combs has repeatedly denied any sexual assaults.

"Mr. Combs denies the entirely false and salacious claims against him in the Complaint and is confident that he and the Company Defendants (against whom no misconduct or participation is even alleged) would be fully vindicated if this case were to proceed to trial," his dismissal motion said.

District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken's decision on whether to dismiss Macy's could come at any time. A decision on Combs' dismissal bid is not due until sometime after the plaintiff responds.

Macy's is the deepest-pocket defendant by far in any of a blizzard of more than 30 sex-assault lawsuits filed against the rapper in the past year.

The plaintiff says in his lawsuit that at the time of the alleged attack, he was working at Macy's flagship Manhattan store for Ecko, a rival hip-hop fashion brand to Combs' Sean John Clothing.

His 19-page lawsuit alleges that he was working in a stockroom when Combs entered with three armed bodyguards who struck him and threatened to kill him.

Combs then orally raped him in the stockroom, while calling him "Ecko" and taunting, "You like that, white boy?" the lawsuit alleges. After what was alleged to be a two-minute attack, Combs then grabbed armfuls of Sean Jean clothing, left the stockroom with his bodyguards, and proceeded to hand out clothes to shoppers "as if nothing had happened," the lawsuit claims.

The plaintiff alleges that the chain did nothing to support him when he came forward with his allegations against Combs, and instead fired him to protect a multimillion-dollar deal with Sean Jean.

In fighting to be dropped as a defendant, lawyers for Macy's argued that the lawsuit does not allege store employees were in any way involved in the attack.

Macy's lawyers also pointed to the New York City Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. The lawyers for the man had argued in their lawsuit that the gender violence law entitled their client to seek damages from Macy's.

Macy's countered that the law does not permit claims against corporations for assaults prior to 2022, and that the lawsuit failed to offer any evidence that the alleged violence was motivated by gender bias.

Combs' alleged "white boy" taunt does not refer to gender bias, Macy's lawyers argued in papers signed by attorney Daniel Kotler.

The word "boy" in that scenario "functions primarily as a term of status and belittlement (boy versus man) rather than as a gendered comment (boy versus girl) — it is in effect an inversion of the classically racist use of the term 'boy' to degrade or belittle African Americans," Macy's side argued.

Kotler did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Buzbee, the lead attorney for the plaintiff, counters in court papers that the New York gender-violence law does cover corporations involved in attacks prior to 2022. He also argues that "the fact that Combs violently assaulted people of both genders does not somehow exempt him" from the law.

"A pretty novel argument that should fail," Buzbee told Business Insider on Tuesday of Macy's dismissal arguments.

• Jay-Z is seeking sanctions over a "Jane Doe" lawsuit that accuses him and Diddy of rape.
• He wants the case dismissed and the Doe's lawyer, Tony Buzbee, to pay a cash fine.
• The lawsuit alleges Jay-Z and Diddy raped the 13-year-old Doe after the 2000 VMA awards.

Rapper Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter is fighting back against a lawsuit that alleges he and Sean "Diddy" Combs raped a 13-year-old girl during a Video Music Awards after-party in 2000.

In a legal filing Wednesday, the music entrepreneur asks a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the lawsuit and order monetary sanctions against Tony Buzbee, the Texas attorney who sued over the alleged incident in October.

The rape claim suffers from "substantial inaccuracies" which should have led Buzbee to drop the lawsuit, Carter's filing says.

Those include woman's father telling NBC News he had no memory of picking his distraught young daughter up from the after-party and driving her home as described in the lawsuit.

"It strains credulity," Carter's filing says, "that a father — impelled to jump into his car in the middle of the night to undertake a minimum 10-hour round trip to pick up his 13-year-old daughter at a random gas station—would forget the entire episode."

Buzbee has also been unable to explain why the Alabama woman who filed the suit, now in her late-30s, told NBC News in December that she had a conversation at the after-party with rapper Benji Madden, whose distinctive "The Last Supper" tattoo she described to the network. Madden later told NBC that he was touring the Midwest during the VMAs that year.

Combs and Carter have both denied the sexual assault.

"A single, initial media interview turned up glaring problems that counsel had either ignored or never investigated," Wednesday's Carter filing, drafted by Manhattan attorney Alex Spiro, complains.

In court filings, Buzbee has dismissed both inconsistencies as unsurprising memory lapses.

"Calling this a 'memory lapse' cannot obscure counsel's lapses in investigating whether multi-decade-old recollections aligned with reality," Carter's filing says.

"These factual discrepancies are neither isolated nor surprising. They result from Mr. Buzbee's rush to launch allegations unhindered by mandatory diligence," the filing says, asking the judge assigned to the lawsuit to impose unspecified cash damages and drop the lawsuit.

Reached for comment Wednesday night, Buzbee said, "With every frantic filing the defense in this case grows more desperate. The rules apply equally to everyone, even those who wrongly think they are above the law. No one is above the law."

The original lawsuit was brought against Combs, his companies, and unnamed accomplices, including "Celebrity A." Carter was identified as Celebrity A when the suit was amended December.

Since then, Buzbee and Carter have traded barbs in public statements and court documents, including a previous filing by the rapper seeking dismissal and sanctions. Two weeks after Carter was named as "Celebrity A" in the revised lawsuit, Buzbee filed a new lawsuit accusing Carter's Roc Nation of trying to intimidate his law firm and turn his plaintiffs against him.

"This conduct was specifically targeted at our firm so we would not pursue cases related to the Diddy litigation," Buzbee said at the time in a statement to Business Insider. "But, we will not be bullied or intimidated."