L.A. Reid won a victory in federal court on Monday (August 25) as his sexual assault trial, which was scheduled to start in two weeks, has now been delayed until early next year.
Reid is a producer, executive, and label founder who has played key roles in the careers of icons like OutKast, TLC, Usher, Toni Braxton, Avril Lavigne, Pink, Ciara, Mariah Carey, and more. He is being sued by Drew Dixon for allegedly sexually assaulting her several times back in 2001, when he was Dixon's boss at Arista Records.
The suit was filed in late 2023, and the trial had long been scheduled to begin on September 8 of this year. Monday afternoon's hearing in Manhattan's Thurgood Marshall Courthouse was originally supposed to be the final meeting of the parties before trial began.
Problems began earlier this summer when Reid's then-attorneys asked to withdraw from the case. During a hearing on July 7, they cited "substantial non-payment" and non-cooperation from their client as their reasons. The withdrawal was finalized earlier this month.
Reid showed up on Monday with potential new counsel in tow: Diana Fabi Samson and Michael DiBenedetto of the firm Aidala Bertuna & Kamins, who he had just met with for the first time earlier that day. Fabi Samson explained that the lawyers were willing to represent Reid, but needed more than two weeks to get up to speed. It would be "malpractice," she explained, to head to trial with that little notice. Even though this is a civil and not a criminal trial, she said, her potential client has a lot on the line.
"For Mr. Reid, this is fighting for his life — his financial life, his reputation," Fabi Samson said.
Judge Jeannette A. Vargas initially seemed dead-set against moving the trial back, explaining that she had told Reid's earlier attorneys many times that their leaving the case would not change the September 8 date. She was aware, she said, that if Reid got new attorneys, they would inevitably ask for a delay.
"This is the exact scenario that I warned we are not going to tolerate," she said.
But a turning point came when Reid said he did not have the case file. That ultimately changed Judge Vargas' mind. The fact that trial was two weeks away and the mogul did not have the record for the case, she said, "is very problematic from a due process standpoint." So she pushed the trial date back. But she wasn't happy about it.
"The court is very regretful that it feels constrained to do this," she said. "[But] there's a significant due process matter."
Dixon's lead attorney Kenya Davis protested, saying that there was nothing preventing Reid from not paying this round of attorneys too, potentially leaving the court in the same position a few months down the line.
"I'm concerned Mr. Reid will play this game again," Davis said.
Judge Vargas explained that she was not ordering the delay in order to give Reid's attorneys more time to prepare, but instead only because Reid does not have the complete file of the case.
"We're going to proceed with the new trial date, whether you have counsel or not," she told Reid.
The judge set a provisional new trial date of January 12. Davis said she would have to check on witness availability before she could confirm if that was okay.
After the hearing, Davis told Complex: "Ms. Dixon has patiently waited for her day in court, and we look forward to presenting her case to a jury in January."
Reid had no comment.