Lenawee County judge sets aside $100 million judgment against Sean 'Diddy' Combs

ADRIAN — While hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was ordered Wednesday to be detained until trial on federal charges in New York City, he received a reprieve in a civil lawsuit in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Judge Anna Marie Anzalone set aside both the $100 million default judgment she awarded Sept. 9 to the Michigan inmate who sued Combs in June and the temporary restraining order she issued in August to prevent Combs from selling any assets that could be used to pay the judgment.

Anzalone ruled the lawsuit was not properly served and it is not likely the plaintiff, Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, will prevail on the merits of the case due to the statute of limitations for sexual assaults.

Wednesday's hearing was a continuation of an emergency hearing that began Monday morning.

While the lawsuit was delivered by certified mail to a residence Combs owns in Los Angeles and lawsuits do not have to be served at a defendant's primary residence, Anzalone said, when she made her earlier rulings she did not note that the lawsuit was not mailed for restricted delivery to the addressee as required by the court rules for serving a lawsuit by mail.

Combs' lead attorney, David Fink of Bloomfield Hills, observed during Wednesday's hearing that Cardello-Smith, by stating how much he paid for postage, had admitted to not mailing the lawsuit for restricted delivery, which Fink said has an additional cost.

"I appreciate him admitting on the record that he only paid $10.40 because that doesn't buy you restricted delivery," Fink said.

Fink argued in the hearing that Cardello-Smith or someone else had doctored one of the two copies of return receipts in the case file to indicate it had been mailed with restricted delivery.

Cardello-Smith, who represented himself after firing his attorney Paul M. Hughes of Highland Park at the beginning of the hearing Wednesday, argued that Anzalone had done everything correctly before Combs filed for an emergency motion to set aside the judgment and restraining order and both should stay in place.

"The service was made," he said. "You issued a very righteous decision, a fair decision."

Anzalone originally granted the restraining order and judgment because neither Combs nor anyone representing him appeared at those hearings while Cardello-Smith offered his arguments by video from Ernest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights.

Cardello-Smith claims that Combs sexually assaulted him during a party at an Adrian hotel on June 14, 1997, then the two of them along with some high-ranking Wayne County law enforcement officials, police officers from Adrian and Detroit, and others conspired to not prosecute Combs for the assault and that Cardello-Smith would go to prison for 14 sexual assaults allegedly committed by Combs in order to protect his family from harm by Combs' representatives or law enforcement. He included a handwritten document that is dated June 20, 1997, and appears to spell out an agreement that contains signatures from the alleged co-conspirators.

Cardello-Smith is serving to up to 75 years in prison after being sentenced in 2008 in Wayne County on first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping charges after he pleaded no contest to the charges, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records. In 2019, he was sentenced to up to 35 years on four more first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges in Wayne County to which he also pleaded no contest. Those four newer charges were from offenses that took place in 1997. The original eight charges were committed in 2008. He also was convicted in 1998 of two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct in 1998 in Wayne County for offenses that took place in 1997 and 1998. Those sentences ended in 2013. On the active charges, the earliest date he could be released from prison is in 2036.

In an affidavit filed with the motions to set aside the judgment and restraining order, Combs said he does not know Cardello-Smith, never assaulted him and denies all of the allegations in the lawsuit.

Anzalone scheduled a hearing for Nov. 4 for the parties to argue additional motions.

At the beginning of Wednesday's hearing, Cardello-Smith argued he had not received all of Combs' filings and had not had time to review what he had received. Anzalone told him he could file a motion to reconsider the outcome of the hearing.

During the hearing, the parties discussed some of the details of Cardello-Smith's allegations and the near-identical lawsuit filed in Monroe County Circuit Court on the same day as the Lenawee County case. The existence of the Monroe County case was originally reported in The Daily Telegram.

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Regarding the two lawsuits — the difference is the Monroe County complaint says the assault happened at a Holiday Inn in Monroe and the Lenawee County case has the city whited out — Cardello-Smith said at the time he worked at Fishbones restaurant at the corner of Brush and Monroe streets in Detroit's Greektown and he "had Monroe on my mind" and typed Monroe in place of Lenawee because of how the word processor's spell check feature worked. He said he filed the suit in Monroe intending to have it transferred to Lenawee County until Lenawee County received the corrected lawsuit with the whited out complaint.

No action has been taken on the Monroe case.

"This isn't court shopping," Cardello-Smith said. "This is a man who was the victim of a crime and who had a public interest, and he had a right not be sexually assaulted and a right not to have my money taken from me. That's what this is about."

He claims the alleged agreement between himself, Combs and others gives him rights to 49% of Combs' business interests if Combs commits any sexual assaults.

"I did everything right," he said about his filings, which he did while representing himself. "I made some typos. I made errors. I'll admit it. I'm not perfect. I'm working under some crazy conditions."

— Contact reporter David Panian at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Michigan judge sets aside judgment against Sean 'Diddy' Combs