Kesha’s legal battle took a huge hit when New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich tossed out every claim she made against Lukasz Gottwald (Dr. Luke) and Sony Music except one, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"Every rape is not a gender-motivated hate crime," Kornreich wrote in her denial of Kesha’s appeal.
The appeal likened Kesha’s contract to slavery and asked that the case be considered under New York’s “hate crime laws.” The judge made an earlier decision to deny Kesha a release from her contract, and now says that some of the discrimination claims either don’t fall under her jurisdiction or don’t meet the legal requirements to be considered.
Kornreich says that the facts Kesha and her team presented don’t convincingly make the case that Dr. Luke had animus towards women. Kornreich’s ruling seems to be based on the lack of physical violence or property damage. The abusive remarks Kesha says were made over a decade-long period are not admissible as evidence. Kesha’s allegations that Dr. Luke assaulted her on an airplane and raped her in a hotel before 2008 are past the five-year statute of limitations, and therefore cannot be considered.
"The claim is time-barred," the judge writes.
However, the judge also writes that "insults about her value as an artist, her looks, and her weight are insufficient to constitute extreme, outrageous conduct intolerable in civilised society."
The legal team had hoped that the judge would have called her contract null and void. The remaining counterclaim is that when Kesha was sued for breach of contract, it represented a termination of the contract. However, she can’t use Dr. Luke’s choice to claim damages instead of ask for performance as a means by which to escape her contract. The claims were dismissed without a chance to amend.
This is a huge blow in Kesha’s legal battle. However she chooses to proceed, her newest attorney, Daniel Petrocelli of O’Melveny & Myers, has a series of legal battles ahead of him.
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