Sean “Diddy” Combs’ civil lawyers want their money and it’s not a little bit.
According to Complex, Diddy’s civil lawyers are looking for $581,893.75 for past work that they claimed that they weren’t paid for.
An October 30 letter sent from Sher Tremonte LLP to Judge John P. Cronan and viewed by Complex, is asking the court to put a lien on the amount in Combs’ defamation case against Courtney Burgess, Ariel Mitchell, and Nexstar.
If Combs wins any money from settlement or judgments against the defendants that the lien could be entitled to that money.
Michael Tremonte backed up the nearly $582,000 figure under oath, submitting a declaration and a sealed spreadsheet detailing the firm’s hours and billing rates. The firm says it didn’t include individual invoices because its work for Combs stretched across dozens of legal matters, making the billing a little more complicated than one giant receipt.
This latest money grab is part of an increasingly ugly breakup between Combs and the attorneys who once represented him. Sher Tremonte moved to withdraw as Diddy’s counsel in September, saying Combs was more than six months behind on payments and that there had been a “total breakdown in cooperation and communication.”
Judge Cronan approved the firm’s withdrawal and granted it a retaining lien on Combs’ case files while the firm documented what it was owed.
Combs sees the entire break up differently and accuses his former lawyers of overcharging him and running up bills he never approved.
“I made the decision to switch lawyers because I won’t let anyone take advantage of me by overcharging me and running up bills that were never approved,” he said in a September statement to NBC News.
Tremonte has denied those allegations, telling NBC News that “any suggestion that we overcharged him is simply false.”
And because apparently one nearly half-million-dollar legal bill wasn’t enough, this latest demand comes just weeks after Combs was ordered to pay NBCUniversal and its co-defendants $477,700.50 in legal fees after losing his defamation lawsuit over the documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.
That award was ordered October 6 by Justice Phaedra F. Perry-Bond, according to People.
Now Combs has another legal tab to worry about, and this one comes from the people who were supposed to be helping him fight his legal battles.
Judge Cronan still has to determine whether Sher Tremonte is entitled to the full amount and whether the firm gets its requested lien.