{"id":6458,"date":"2025-06-12T22:03:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T22:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/top-dawg-must-face-doxxing-claim-in-sexual-harassment-case-judge-says\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T22:03:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T22:03:27","slug":"top-dawg-must-face-doxxing-claim-in-sexual-harassment-case-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/top-dawg-must-face-doxxing-claim-in-sexual-harassment-case-judge-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Dawg Must Face Doxxing Claim In Sexual Harassment Case, Judge Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> Los Angeles judge says hip-hop powerhouse Top Dawg Entertainment must face allegations that the company \u201cdoxxed\u201d two women after they sued the record label for sexual harassment and assault.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling Wednesday, Judge Michael E. Whitaker<\/strong> refused to dismiss allegations that the company broke California state law by revealing the identities of the two accusers in a response statement to the media that called the lawsuit a \u201cshakedown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTop Dawg had argued that the statement was fair game because lawyers for the two women spoke the media first, but the judge was unpersuaded.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants argue that it was plaintiffs who initiated the inflammatory press release and it was necessary for them to publicly respond and correct the record,\u201d the judge writes. \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s correctly point out, however, that publicly revealing their true identities was not a necessary part of correcting the narrative in the public record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em> on Thursday, Top Dawg\u2019s attorney Allison Hart<\/strong> vowed to challenge the ruling further: \u201cWe have the utmost respect for the court, but believe that yesterday\u2019s decision that our clients were not allowed to disclose the plaintiffs\u2019 names was in error, and we intend to immediately appeal and continue vigorously defending against plaintiffs\u2019 bogus claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for the plaintiffs, meanwhile, praised the court\u2019s decision: \u201cOur clients believe the Court\u2019s ruling speaks for itself, and are gratified the case has been set for trial,\u201d said Shounak S. Dharap<\/strong>. \u201cThey look forward to presenting all the evidence to a jury of their peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUsing the pseudonyms Jane Doe and Jane Roe, the two women filed a lawsuit in December against Top Dawg, a top hip-hop label best known for helping to launch the careers of Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Doechii. Doe, a public relations staffer, says she faced \u201cinappropriate workplace behavior,\u201d including harassment and assault, as well as unpaid wages; Roe, a friend of a Top Dawg artist, says she was \u201csexually harassed twice by TDE employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to the company itself, the lawsuit names execs Anthony \u201cMoosa\u201d Tiffith Jr.<\/strong> and Brandon Tiffith<\/strong>, the sons of TDE founder Anthony \u201cTop\u201d Tiffith, Sr.<\/strong>, as defendants.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTDE\u2019s leadership knew about these instances of sexual abuse, as well as the failure to properly compensate Ms. Doe, yet took no action to prevent further violations, discipline the individuals involved, or offer supportive services to plaintiffs,\u201d their lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo months after the case was filed, lawyers for the women issued a press release publicizing their allegations. During the resulting media coverage, Top Dawg issued a strongly-worded denial, claiming the allegations were \u201cfabricated\u201d and filed by women seeking \u201cten minutes of fame.\u201d Along with those denunciations, it also included the women\u2019s real names, which had been unknown at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tA week later, attorneys for the accusers added a new claim to their lawsuit, alleging that the press statement had illegally released the womens\u2019 names. They claimed the move violated a recently-enacted California statute that allows people to sue when they\u2019ve been doxxed \u2013 a modern term for maliciously releasing someone\u2019s identity on the internet.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeeking to dismiss that new accusation, Top Dawg argued that the two women never had a legal right to sue under the \u201cJane\u201d pseudonyms in the first place. But Judge Whitaker suggests that call had not been Top Dawg\u2019s to make on its own.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe court need not decide whether plaintiffs\u2019 would ultimately have been able to proceed under pseudonyms or would have been ordered to proceed under their real names,\u201d the judge says. \u201cThe court and parties were deprived of that answer when defendants revealed Plaintis\u2019 true names in a public news article, mooting the issue. Thus, at the time the statement was made, it revealed plaintiffs\u2019 true identities, which were not previously publicly known.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the ruling, the entire case against Top Dawg remains pending. The defendants might now ask the judge to dismiss the original allegations of sexual harassment and assault; if such a motion were denied, the case would move forward into discovery and toward an eventual trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Los Angeles judge says hip-hop powerhouse Top Dawg Entertainment must face allegations that the company \u201cdoxxed\u201d two women after they sued the record label for sexual harassment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,786,6286,6287,422,1532,423,301,180],"class_list":["post-6458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-claim","tag-dawg","tag-doxxing","tag-face","tag-harassment","tag-judge","tag-sexual","tag-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}