Tony Buzbee is taking legal steps to try to dismiss a Jay-Z lawsuit against him, claiming they struck a deal and Jay reneged -- but Jay's camp says Buzbee is full of it.
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00:00So, this is crazy, but Tony Busby, who has filed a gazillion lawsuits against Diddy,
00:10not related to the criminal case, but filed all sorts of lawsuits.
00:15There have been a lot of issues surrounding him with, you know, in particular,
00:19one woman who made a claim both against Jay-Z and Diddy.
00:23Exactly.
00:24Who then dropped the claim, and Jay-Z is now suing that woman and Tony Busby for defamation.
00:30Well, Tony Busby says, you have no right to sue me.
00:34He has gone to court saying, judge, dismiss this lawsuit against me because we had a deal, comma, bro, exclamation point.
00:43Just to be clear, the bro is not a quote from the lawsuit, but it is the tone of what Tony Busby is saying in these documents.
00:53He's saying that, you know, when they agreed to drop, well, I shouldn't even use the word agreement,
00:59Well, that is the issue here, is that Tony Busby is saying he and Jay-Z and Jay-Z's lawyer, Alex Spiro, had an agreement.
01:08And that agreement was that Tony Busby and the Jane Doe accuser were going to go into court and dismiss that lawsuit.
01:16And in exchange, that's the way he makes it seem in these documents, in exchange, Jay-Z would have his investigators back off the Jane Doe accuser.
01:27In these documents, they say that days after the lawsuit was dropped, investigators showed up at this woman's house.
01:34Okay, so stop for a second.
01:36So explain this to me.
01:37I just heard what you said.
01:39Where in this agreement did it say that Jay-Z's not going to sue Tony Busby for defamation?
01:44Yeah, it doesn't say that.
01:46It doesn't say that.
01:46And by the way, they're saying there was an agreement.
01:50To be fair, Jay-Z's side is saying there was never an agreement.
01:54But let's assume for a second there actually was.
01:56Let's say there was, even though Jay-Z's team is saying BS.
02:00Let's say there was.
02:02Where does Tony Busby have a right to dismiss the defamation lawsuit because private investigators continued on the hunt for what they say is the truth involving the woman?
02:17Right.
02:19He may have a countersuit if there were an agreement.
02:21But it's not a grounds for dismissal.
02:22It's not a grounds for dismissal.
02:23Now, we should say, there are a couple of other things he put in there for the grounds of dismissal, which he says they sued in the wrong court.
02:30Okay, well, that's a whole other thing.
02:31If they sued in the wrong court, they just refiled in the right court.
02:33Well, this is not a straight-up breach of contract kind of.
02:36You have to dismiss because that's what our contract said.
02:38But he is pointing out that there was this agreement.
02:40Now, Jay-Z's lawyer.
02:42What agreement?
02:42I will explain.
02:43Jay-Z's lawyer describes this very differently.
02:45He says, look, I got a call from Tony Busby's lawyer who said he wanted to negotiate a dismissal.
02:49And I told him in no uncertain terms that Jay-Z would not negotiate any sort of settlement about this.
02:55However, that lawyer said, okay, we'll voluntarily dismiss the suit.
02:59And, you know, then your sanctions motion against us for all this bad behavior should kind of go away as well.
03:05He thinks that's what the agreement was, that you would walk away from trying to get sanctions against us.
03:09Whereas, Jay-Z's lawyer says, look, our sanctions motion.
03:12Wait a minute, wait a minute.
03:12Derek, Derek, is that in his head?
03:15Is that in his head?
03:17Or, you know, my understanding is usually if you really had an agreement, you put it in writing and you sign it.
03:24And that they, right, when they filed the dismissal, would they say.
03:28Here's the paperwork, Your Honor.
03:30Here's the paperwork.
03:31It is certainly not a negotiated settlement like that.
03:34There is no contractual deal that we can look at this paperwork.
03:37There's a series of phone calls and maybe emails, it sounds like.
03:40What fakakta situation is it where a lawyer says, you're not going to sue me, but we're not going to really put it in writing?
03:48Huh?
03:49This is the blood food.
03:50This is not the way lawyers do deals.
03:51You're right about that.
03:52To rely on a couple of phone calls and handshakes, that's not the way lawyers do things.
03:57We write it down so that we can look to it and say you breached it down the road.
04:00So you're right, this is very loose and informal.
04:02If you really wanted to rely on that, you probably should have gotten it in writing.
04:04Well, and he's not even saying, you agreed not to sue us.
04:10He never, I mean, if he's going to make the argument that there's an agreement, the agreement has to be, you agreed not to sue us for filing the lawsuit in the first place.
04:23You're right, although the spirit of the deal, according to that guy, was you drop it and leave us alone.
04:30That law doesn't work that way with spirit.
04:32You know that, Derek.
04:33Is it also, can I just ask you guys, as attorneys, I'll ask you, is it weird for an attorney like Tony Busby to try to broker something with Jay-Z where Tony Busby's client is going to drop her lawsuit and Tony Busby is going to get some benefit from it?
04:51No, it's not weird.
04:52I mean, this happens all the time.
04:55But why would Tony Busby get some, why should he benefit from malicious, because the argument is malicious prosecution.
05:03And that's what Jay-Z said from the jump in this case.
05:06And so, yeah, I mean, lawyers do this a lot where lawyers will say, look, let's have a mutual dismissal and we agree not to go after the other party in the future.
05:16I mean, that's not uncommon.
05:19It's just, that's not this case.
05:20The point is, my point is that it's almost like Tony Busby, according to Jay-Z's side, was using his client in order to get some benefit for himself, which is, don't go after me in court and my client will drop her suit.
05:35Well, no, no, no, it could be, look, I mean, here's the way it could have worked, that Tony Busby could have said to Jay-Z's lawyer, look, we're going to have a, we will dismiss with prejudice, but you agree not to file a malicious prosecution lawsuit because that could be against the lawyer and the client.
05:53So agree not to file against either of us and we're, and we're, we'll go about our merry way.
05:58But that didn't happen.
05:59That didn't happen.
05:59And Jay-Z's side said there was no deal whatsoever.
06:02Just to be clear, Jay-Z says he did not settle this at all.
06:07He did not pay one cent to that Jane Doe accuser.
06:10Never made an agreement with him.
06:11Never made an agreement.
06:12And even if there was this agreement, it doesn't make sense.
06:15It's not going to get dismissed.
06:16Hi, my name is Kyra and I'm from Columbus.
06:19I think that Tony Busby is probably doing what my mother used to say, writing a check you can't cash.
06:26This is a game you don't want to play with somebody who has endless amounts of resources.
06:31And when you're coming with these type of very damaging claims, you have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
06:36And he should know that as a lawyer.
06:38So good luck, Tony.
06:39But it sounds like you might be getting sued, brother.
06:42Yeah.
06:43See ya.
06:43Well, he's getting sued.
06:44He's already getting sued.
06:45He's not getting out of it.
06:46He's not getting out of it for this.
06:47He's not getting sued.
06:48He's not getting sued.
06:49He's not getting sued.
06:50He's not getting sued.
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07:00He's not getting sued.
07:01He's not getting sued.
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07:06He's not getting sued.
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07:08He's not getting sued.
07:09He's not getting sued.