Note: This article discusses sexual assault allegations.
In recent years, Kesha has returned to reclaim her pop-rebel crown, first with 2017’s pointedly mature comeback album Rainbow, then with this year’s pointedly hard-partying follow-up High Road. But the legal turmoil that hampered her musical output for years hasn’t ended, even as she’s returned to the spotlight. In 2016, Kesha dropped a California lawsuit she’d filed two years earlier against Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, her producer and label boss, accusing him sexual assault. A subsequent lawsuit from Dr. Luke, however, which claims that she defamed him with false rape allegations, is ongoing. Kesha suffered a serious blow last week, when a judge ruled, as part of a wider decision, that Kesha defamed Dr. Luke with claims she made about him to Lady Gaga.
As Dr. Luke’s allegations against Kesha head toward a possible trial, we’ve compiled a breakdown of the major legal developments in the cases so far.
October 2014
Kesha sues Dr. Luke in California court for sexual assault and battery, among other claims. The complaint includes explosive allegations that Luke gave Kesha “sober pills”—which she says were really a form of date rape drug—and raped her while she was unconscious. Her accusations stem from an alleged incident in October 2005, shortly after she signed a recording contract with Luke, and several years before her career took off with 2010’s Hot 100 chart-topper “TiK ToK.”
Kesha also alleges that Dr. Luke subjected her to long-term emotional abuse and fat-shaming. His behavior, she asserts in the complaint, has caused “severe depression, post-traumatic stress, social isolation, and panic attacks.” Kesha asks a judge to free her from her recording contract with Luke’s Sony Music imprint Kemosabe Records.
In response, Dr. Luke’s lawyer calls Kesha’s lawsuit “spectacular and outrageous fiction.” The same day, Dr. Luke sues Kesha in a New York court for defamation. He claims she is trying to extort him with false accusations to get out of her record deal.
June-September 2015
A California judge rules that the New York defamation case should proceed first, in part because her Kemosabe contract had a provision requiring disputes to be handled in New York. In the wake of this legal setback, Kesha files counterclaims to Dr. Luke’s lawsuit, denying his allegations and reiterating her own claims of sexual assault and battery. She asks the court for a preliminary injunction, which would allow her to leave her Kemosabe deal and sign to another label while the legal dispute is still underway.
February-May 2016
New York State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich denies Kesha’s request for the injunction. The judge writes that freeing Kesha from her contract before either side has argued its case would undercut the legal system, because a termination of the contract is the outcome Kesha is seeking in her claims. At a hearing, lawyers for Sony signal that the label might consider a recording plan for Kesha that would not involve Luke.
Without deciding on the truth of the underlying claims of rape and abuse, Kornreich eventually dismisses Kesha’s request to nullify her contract. The judge rules that most of the singer-songwriter’s claims, including emotional distress and employment discrimination, are not valid legal causes of action for scrapping a contract in New York. The judge writes of Kesha’s claim that Luke’s alleged sexual violence constituted a gender-based hate crime, “Every rape is not a gender-motivated hate crime.” Kesha replaces her legal team.
August 2016
Kesha drops her California lawsuit against Dr. Luke. Her lawyer says she has 28 new songs ready to go and wants to put out a single and album “as soon as possible.”
January 2017
Both sides ask Kornreich for permission to amend their claims. Kesha, moving on from her hate-crime allegations and now claiming more straightforward breaches of contract, tries again to void her record deal. “You can get a divorce from an abusive spouse,” the new countersuit reads. “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.”
In his amendment, Dr. Luke alleges that Kesha sent Lady Gaga text messages the previous winter claiming that Luke raped both Kesha and another female recording artist, who, it later emerges, is Katy Perry. He argues that the texts to Gaga were further instances of defamation which contributed to the tarnishing of his reputation in the media.
February 2017
In emails newly filed into evidence by Kesha’s legal team, Luke complains that Kesha was having “diet coke and turkey” while supposedly on a juice fast. In another email, he writes that “A list songwriters and producers are reluctant to give Kesha their songs because of her weight.”
A lawyer for Dr. Luke’s says the documents don’t “disclose the larger record of evidence showing the bad faith of Kesha Sebert and her representatives which is greatly damaging to them.”
March-April 2017
Kornreich denies Kesha permission to amend her claims, ruling that Luke did not breach his contracts with the artist. News surfaces that Dr. Luke is no longer CEO of his Sony imprint, Kemosabe Records. Previously, the Wrap reported that Sony had planned to end its relationship with Luke due to the negative public relations of the Kesha case, a report that Luke's team denied at the time.
August 2017
Kesha releases her first album in five years, Rainbow. Although the album is out via Kemosabe and Sony, a lawyer for Dr. Luke says that the producer has waived a clause in Kesha’s contract requiring that he produce at least six songs on any of her albums. Dr. Luke signals an intention to “pursue the equivalent producer royalties in court,” and may also profit off the album in other ways.
May 2018
A New York appeals court upholds Kornreich’s rejection of Kesha’s amended claims, again shooting down Kesha’s bid to get out of her record contract. Dr. Luke, whose defamation claim is now essentially all that is left of the two cases (pending any other appeals), reveals that he is seeking $50 million in damages.
August 2018
Katy Perry denies being sexually assaulted by Dr. Luke, in a newly unsealed excerpt from a 2017 deposition.
January 2019
Kesha’s lawyers argue that Dr. Luke’s and Katy Perry’s denials that Dr. Luke raped Perry do not prove that such a rape never happened.
Lady Gaga defends Kesha in a newly unsealed portion of her 2017 deposition in the case. “Why on Earth would this girl tell the entire world this happened?” Gaga responds to a question from Dr. Luke’s lawyer. “Why on Earth? Do you know what it’s like for survivors? Do you know what it’s like to tell people? Don’t you roll your eyes at me. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
February 2020
Kesha releases High Road, again without Luke’s musical involvement, on January 31.
One week later, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jennifer G. Schecter rules that Kesha’s comments to Lady Gaga about Katy Perry were false and defamatory. Schecter, who took over the case following Kornreich’s May 2018 retirement, also rules that because Dr. Luke isn’t legally a “public figure,” because he isn’t a household name. This lowers the standard Luke’s team must meet to prove a defamation claim at trial, from the “actual malice” required for claims by public figures to simple negligence. Kesha’s legal team vows to appeal.
The judge writes that she can’t, based on legal filings alone, determine the truth of the alleged rape, and leaves the door open to resolving this at trial. “Kesha and Gottwald have very different accounts about what happened on the night at issue,” the judge writes. “This court cannot decide, as a matter of law on papers and without any assessment of credibility, who should be believed.”
March 2020
On March 9, Kesha filed an appeal of Judge Schechter’s ruling. She is seeking a reversal of the ruling on the grounds that her allegedly defamatory statements are “privileged” under New York law and also “non-actionable” opinions.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, we encourage you to reach out for support:
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline
http://www.rainn.org
1 800 656 HOPE (4673)
Crisis Text Line
http://www.facebook.com/crisistextline (chat support)
SMS: Text “HERE” to 741-741
