L.A. Reid Granted a Delay in Drew Dixon Trial

Last week it was reported that former Arista Records CEO, L.A. Reid, lost his legal team over nonpayment, just 2 weeks ahead of the trial date for the civil sixual assault lawsuit filed against him by former Arista Records employee, Drew Dixon [click here if you missed that].

L.A. retains new counsel and has been granted a delay in the trial...

From Complex

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."