By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-18 20:13:31 | Updated at 2024-12-18 22:36:49
2 hours ago
'A big, mean, ambitious, tenacious, fire-breathing Texas trial lawyer. Really big. Poster boy big.'
That's how the Texas Tribune once described Tony Buzbee, the attorney and class action specialist taking on Sean 'Diddy' Combs and now, sensationally, Jay-Z too over allegations that the rap superstars are child rapists.
And he'll need to 'fire-breathing' given the ferocious and extended broadside that Jay-Z has already unleashed against him.
Indeed, it's turning into quite a feud between the rap god and the courtroom star.
On Thursday, it emerged that Buzbee is additionally suing Jay-Z's entertainment company, Roc Nation, and several of the star's lawyers for allegedly conspiring with, and paying, some of Buzbee's former clients to sue his law firm.
'The Defendants overstepped, got sloppy, and stupidly got caught in their illegal scheme on tape,' Buzbee said in a statement.
Two lawsuits accusing Buzbee of fraud and other misconduct were filed by his former clients last week. Both plaintiffs accuse Buzbee and his firm of abuse and unethical conduct in the handling of two personal injury suits last year.
One of the lawsuits was filed by Matthew Ray Thompson. He claims Buzbee's firm intercepted monthly payments he was owed after being injured while working as a deckhand on a vessel that collided with a barge in a Houston, Texas ship channel in July 2023.
'A big, mean, ambitious, tenacious, fire-breathing Texas trial lawyer. Really big. Poster boy big.' That's how the Texas Tribune once described Tony Buzbee (pictured), the attorney and class action specialist taking on Diddy and now, sensationally, Jay-Z too, over allegations that the rap superstars are child rapists.
Jay-Z has called Buzbee a 'deplorable human being' and 'an ambulance chaser in a cheap suit'. (Pictured: Buzbee and his second wife Frances).
Combs (left), who is already behind bars facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, has also denied the rape allegation.
Meanwhile, the perpetually glowering Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, exploded with self-righteous indignation earlier this month when an unnamed woman claimed in a civil lawsuit that he and Combs raped her in 2000 – when she was only 13.
Jay-Z released a statement not only dismissing the allegation but trashing the reputation and integrity of the Houston personal-injury attorney who's been hailed as one of the most successful trial lawyers in Texas.
'My lawyer received a blackmail attempt, called a demand letter, from a "lawyer" named Tony Buzbee,' Carter wrote. 'What he had calculated was the nature of these allegations and the public scrutiny would make me want to settle.'
He went on: 'No sir, it had the opposite effect! It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!'
Combs, who is already behind bars facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, has also denied the rape allegation.
Both sides – Jay-Z plus his lawyer Alex Spiro, and Buzbee – have accused the other of using underhand, coercive tactics.
Team Carter alleges Buzbee added Jay-Z's name to a lawsuit first filed in October in revenge after he refused to pay off his accuser with an 'exorbitant' sum, prompting Carter to sue Buzbee for extortion in Los Angeles last month.
Spiro also claims Buzbee's firm might be pressuring potential clients to make false accusations in lawsuits (an allegation the lawyer denies).
Buzbee denies any attempt at extortion, dismissing the Team Carter claims as a 'silly sideshow' intended to distract from the rape allegation.
Jay-Z, meanwhile, has heaped on the abuse with a string of personal attacks on Buzbee, who is a former US Marine.
'You claim to be a marine?!,' the rapper scoffed last week. 'Marines are known for their valor, you have neither valor nor dignity.'
Jay-Z has also called Buzbee a 'deplorable human being' and – possibly more hurtful for a successful attorney who likes to cut a dash – 'an ambulance chaser in a cheap suit'.
But Buzbee, who's made a fortune suing huge corporations and celebrities, relishes a battle.
Since quitting the Marines and launching his own law firm in 2000, 56-year-old Buzbee – who boasts a large tattoo of a shark on his arm – has amassed a huge fortune.
And unlike other class-action specialists, he isn't self-conscious about the vast sums his work earns him, happily posting pictures to social media variously on lavish vacations, smoking cigars, decked out in expensive jewelry and on his private jet. He also owns a yacht and a 7,000-acre Texas ranch with his second wife Frances, who is 24 years his junior, and has homes in New York and Montana.
His four children, all now adults, come from his first wife Zoe.
Buzbee reportedly gave Frances, the daughter of a wealthy Galveston family, a farm as a wedding present and named it after her. She now runs it as an animal rescue center.
In 2022, Buzbee put the five-bedroom, Tudor-style Houston mansion he'd shared with Zoe on the market for $27.5 million, a record for the city and only nine years after the couple had bought it for a reported $14 million.
'People always say trial lawyers are such liberals but I'm a big believer in capitalism,' he told the New York Times in 2010.
Unlike other class-action specialists, he isn't self-conscious about the vast sums his work earns him, happily posting pictures to social media variously on lavish vacations, smoking cigars, decked out in expensive jewelry and on his private jet.
He also owns a yacht and a 7,000-acre Texas ranch with his second wife Frances (pictured), who is 24 years his junior, and has homes in New York and Montana. His four children, all now adults, come from his first wife Zoe.
In 2022, Buzbee put the five-bedroom, Tudor-style Houston mansion he'd shared with Zoe on the market for $27.5 million, a record for the city and only nine years after the couple had bought it for a reported $14 million.
Buzbee has been involved in a string of high-profile cases including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which propelled him to nationwide fame, as well as the 2021 sexual misconduct accusations against NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson in which Buzbee represented a Houston massage therapist.
At least Jay-Z cannot be faulted in describing Tony Buzbee as 'self-promoting'.
In late September, ten days after Combs was dramatically arrested in New York, Buzbee announced he had 50 clients who claimed the rapper had sexually abused them. Within days, he said that number had risen to more than 120.
After Combs was then indicted in October, Buzbee held a high-profile news conference to tempt other accusers to contact him via a hotline – written in large numbers behind him.
He promised that the scandal would expose 'many powerful people… many dirty secrets'.
He is now representing more than 200 accusers, both men and women, who claim Combs sexually abused them.
Whether the Jay-Z will come to anything is another matter entirely. But in sanctimoniously telling Buzbee that 'I'm not from your world - I'm a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn,' Jay-Z is wide of the mark.
Buzbee also boasts humble origins. One of four children of a butcher and high school cafeteria worker, Buzbee grew up poor on a farm in Atlanta, Texas. He mowed yards and did odds jobs to buy his first car, a used 1974 Jeep.
He attended Texas A&M University on a Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarship, graduating in 1990.
He then joined the Marine Corps, serving as an infantry officer in conflicts in the Persian Gulf and Somalia. He was later selected to lead a special reconnaissance unit.
Leaving the Marines, he went to law school until 1997, joined a litigation firm and in 2000 set up his own – The Buzbee Law Firm. Its blunt motto? 'Just Win'.
Buzbee hasn't always done that, but he's certainly got noticed far beyond the Lone Star state legal world.
One of his first big wins came in 2001 when he represented offshore drilling workers who alleged their wages had been suppressed by their employers.
He won them a $75 million judgment against drilling company Transocean Ltd and the $18 million that came to his firm in fees allowed Buzbee to start amassing a fabulous collection of sports cars.
Oil provided another lucrative windfall for him in 2005 when he sued BP on behalf of 179 clients over a Texas refinery explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170. The oil giant paid out more than $2 billion and Buzbee estimated he made nearly $100 million from the litigation.
He led the charge against the UK oil company again, five years later, when BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf in 2010, dumping 134 million gallons of crude oil into the sea.
Buzbee sued the oil giant on behalf of 10,000 individuals and businesses who said they were impacted by the spill. BP paid out billions in settlements.
More recently, he has attracted greater attention for high-profile celebrity cases. In 2021, Buzbee filed a $750 million lawsuit against rapper Travis Scott on behalf of at least 125 victims of that year's Astroworld music festival in Houston, at which 10 people had died and hundreds were injured in a crowd surge during Scott's set.
Buzbee settled several consequent lawsuits with Scott and Live Nation, which produced the show.
Buzbee once annoyed his neighbors by parking a Second World War Sherman tank outside his Houston mansion.
In 2010, Buzbee gave away a 13-strong collection of hugely expensive cars worth millions to charity. Buzbee admitted his four children had been horrified but said he didn't want them to become 'spoiled'.
Five months after the end of his marriage to first wife Zoe in 1997, a woman described as being on a first date with him was charged with criminal mischief for allegedly refusing to leave his mansion and damaging at least $300,000 in artwork at his home, including two Andy Warhols.
That same year, Buzbee filed lawsuits on behalf of more than two dozen women alleging sexual misconduct against the Cleveland Browns quarterback DeShaun Watson.
They variously accused Watson of sexual assault and inappropriate conduct during massage therapy sessions. Watson settled with 23 of his accusers.
As well as taking on A-listers, Buzbee has also defended a string of high-profile people.
In 2016, he persuaded a Houston court to acquit former Texas governor Rick Perry of abuse-of-power charges.
Last year, he led the legal team defending right-wing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial over allegations that included corruption, fraud and obstruction of justice. Paxton was acquitted.
Earlier this year, Buzbee unsuccessfully defended LA socialite Rebecca Grossman who was convicted of second-degree murder over a car crash that killed two young boys.
He makes headlines even when he's not in court. In 2010, Buzbee gave away a 13-strong collection of hugely expensive cars worth millions to charity. Buzbee admitted his four children had been horrified but said he didn't want them to become 'spoiled'.
Buzbee's pride in his military past prompted him to pay $600,000 in 2017 for a decommissioned WW2 tank which he parked in the street outside his sprawling Houston home, reportedly to the irritation of his neighbors.
Buzbee has also thrown his hat into the political ring, repeatedly running for public office in Texas.
But after seventeen years running unsuccessfully as a Democrat for state representative, he switched sides to join the Republicans in 2019, running to become mayor of Houston and spending $10 million of his own money in the process. In the end, he still lost.
There have been humiliations in his private life too.
Five months after the end of his marriage to first wife Zoe in 1997, a woman described as being on a first date with him was charged with criminal mischief for allegedly refusing to leave his mansion and damaging at least $300,000 in artwork at his home, including two Andy Warhol paintings that she poured wine over.
The case was later dismissed after the woman, Lindy Lou Layman, agreed to 120 hours of community service and random drug testing.
Last month, an unidentified former female client accused Buzbee of assaulting her while he was representing her during her divorce. She alleges Buzbee pushed a champagne flute into her face in a 'fit of rage', chipping a tooth, and later committing malpractice by messing up her case, costing her millions. Buzbee dismissed the lawsuit as 'crazy fiction' and 'defamation'.
In the same week, he was sued by Jay-Z for extortion and 'intentional infliction of emotional distress'.
A fawning US media has a habit of treating Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce with kid gloves, but Buzbee is clearly ready to get back into his Sherman tank.
'Sunlight is the best disinfectant and I am quite certain the sun is coming,' he warned on Facebook earlier this month.
