Dr. Luke wins one fight in battle with Kesha
An appeals court rules the producer isn’t a public figure in his defamation suit against the singer.
NEW YORK >> An appellate court ruled for music producer Dr. Luke on an important legal question in his defamation suit against pop star Kesha, saying the Grammy-nominated hitmaker isn’t a public figure in the eyes of the law.
The decision isn’t a final judgment in the long-running court clash between the multiplatinum-selling singer, who says Dr. Luke raped her, and the producer, who denies it and says his onetime protege smeared him with lies.
But Thursday’s ruling upholds a lower court’s 2020 finding that Kesha made a defamatory statement about him — to Lady Gaga — and that she can’t defend it by saying that Dr. Luke is a public figure. That matters because public figures have to meet a higher legal standard than everyday people do in order to prove they’ve been defamed.
Requests for comment were sent to lawyers for Dr. Luke, for Kesha and for more than a dozen media outlets and organizations that filed friend-of-thecourt papers in the case. The media group argued that the lower court’s ruling would help powerful people squash free speech and reporting on sexual abuse.
But a divided panel of state Supreme Court Appellate Division judges ruled that the lower court was right to decide that Dr. Luke wasn’t a public figure.
“Although he is an acclaimed music producer and well known in the entertainment industry, he is not a household name,” the opinion said.