“He was the icon for hip-hop moving off the street, into the clubs and into bottle service,” said Dan Charnas, the author of “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop.”
Mr. Combs has described his most recent reinvention as his “love era,” taking Love as his latest stage name and titling his recent LP “The Love Album: Off the Grid.” He has espoused a social justice-focused approach for his businesses, with Combs Global, his umbrella company, adopting a mission to “build iconic brands and empower diverse communities at the same time.” Lately he has given millions of dollars in donations to historically Black colleges and universities.
The wave of lawsuits against him now threatens that image. In the second case, Joi Dickerson-Neal accused Mr. Combs of drugging and raping her in 1991, and recording the incident on video; in her complaint, Ms. Dickerson-Neal said that the news of Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit had prompted her to file her own. In a third suit, Liza Gardner says that in 1990, Mr. Combs coerced her into sex and then, a couple of days later, choked her so hard she passed out. All three suits were filed as a deadline approached for the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that allowed people who said they were sexually abused to file claims even after the statute of limitations had expired.
In a statement, Jonathan D. Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said: “The new claims against Mr. Combs for alleged misconduct from many years ago, which were filed at the last minute, are all denied and rejected by him. He views these lawsuits as a money grab. Because of Mr. Combs’s fame and success, he is an easy target for accusers who attempt to smear him. The New York Legislature surely did not intend or expect its laws to be misused. Mr. Combs trusts that the public will remain skeptical and not rush to accept the unsubstantiated allegations made against him.”
A representative of Mr. Combs declined to address more detailed questions about the impact of the recent lawsuits on Mr. Combs’s business and other pursuits or respond to questions about past accusations of violence by Mr. Combs. But the size of Combs Global, which includes his record label, Revolt, a bottled water brand and his Sean John clothing line, among other businesses, could insulate his brand from significant financial fallout.
As news of those suits ricocheted through social media, accusations from Mr. Combs’s past were resurfaced and dissected. In a 2004 interview, Kimora Lee Simmons, the model and TV personality, said that Mr. Combs had threatened her while she was pregnant. Gina Huynh, a onetime girlfriend, said on a 2019 podcast that Mr. Combs had dragged her by the hair, thrown a high-heel shoe at her and pressured her to get two abortions.
