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The legal battle between Kesha and Dr. Luke — the pop star and the megaproducer — stretched on for nearly a decade. But the dispute largely centered on a night in 2005 when the singer alleged that the producer sexually assaulted her in West Hollywood.
Kesha publicly accused Dr. Luke of having raped her. He denied it, and the ensuing scandal raged for the last decade. The Times examined what really happened between the pop star and the producer.
Here are some key people and places in the case:
Known today for hits like “TiK ToK,” “Die Young,” and “Timber,” Sebert was discovered as a teenager in Tennessee by an up-and-coming producer in New York, Lukasz Gottwald, now known as Dr. Luke. Sebert entered into a six-album contract with Dr. Luke in 2005 when she was 18. She moved to Los Angeles with hopes of achieving stardom, and within days of signing the contract, Gottwald invited her to record with Paris Hilton.
The sisters Hilton are not key players in the war between Sebert and Gottwald, but they figure prominently in the night Sebert alleges she was raped. On Oct. 5, 2005, Sebert sang background vocals on a song Gottwald was producing for Paris Hilton and later attended Nicky Hilton’s 22nd birthday party at a Hollywood club. During the afterparty, Sebert, then 18, vomited in Paris Hilton’s closet, knocked over a tray of cocaine, and was asked to leave, according to her testimony.
When Sebert was kicked out of Paris Hilton’s afterparty, Gottwald left with his 18-year-old protege. Sebert said she has no memory of what happened next. Gottwald said they walked from Hilton’s home to the Mondrian, a 12-story hotel on the Sunset Strip — that was less than 10 minutes by foot. Gottwald said that at the hotel, Sebert took the bed and he slept on the couch. In the morning, he left to record with another young singer he had discovered, Katy Perry. Sebert said she woke up naked in Gottwald’s room, her genitals sore, and began placing calls for help to her mother and a friend. After waking up, she remained in the hotel room for hours, ordering room service and a pay-per-view movie, as the hotel bill below shows.
Kesha’s mother, herself the writer of a hit Dolly Parton song, figured prominently in her daughter’s music career. She testified to characterizing her daughter’s night in Gottwald’s hotel room as “rape” in late 2005, at a time she was trying to extricate her daughter from a contract with him. Later, after her daughter’s career took off, Pebe Sebert and Gottwald had an affectionate relationship, as indicated by emails the two exchanged in 2010 and 2011. But their relationship grew increasingly acrimonious as she came to believe Gottwald was depriving her of her rightful share of songwriting credits. In an email she sent to Gottwald’s attorneys in 2013, below, she asserted that the producer date-raped her daughter. He testified it was the first time he understood he was being accused of rape.
Mogul Irving Azoff, among the most powerful people in the music business, was an investor in the company that managed Kesha, Vector Management. As Kesha’s team sought to renegotiate her contract with Gottwald in 2012, leaders of Vector kept Azoff apprised of their progress, or lack thereof. Azoff in turn was blunt in his view of Gottwald.
Meiselas, a prominent music industry lawyer, was retained by Kesha to renegotiate her contract with Gottwald in 2013. Meiselas brought in Mark Geragos, a well-known criminal defense attorney. Geragos’ firm drafted a lawsuit against Gottwald and Sony that accused the producer of raping Sebert, along with a host of other allegations, according to testimony and a draft of the lawsuit filed in court. Meiselas presented the draft suit in June 2014 as negotiations with Gottwald and Sony continued, according to testimony. When Kesha went public in 2014 with allegations against Gottwald, Geragos led a media blitz in which he called the producer a “predator” and compared him to Bill Cosby, according to case filings, including excerpts of the lawyer’s comments to the press contained in court records. He told associates that more alleged victims would come forward and subsequently claimed that Gottwald had raped Lady Gaga — which both Gottwald and Gaga insisted was untrue, according to testimony, correspondence, and other case records.
The site TMZ was the first to report that Sebert sued Gottwald in 2014, a deliberate choice by Sebert’s team. Emails show that TMZ allowed Sebert’s PR team to review an unpublished draft of their article.
Lady Gaga became one of Sebert’s most fervent supporters, rallying fans on social media to support her fellow pop star and looking for ways to get Sebert signed to her label, Interscope. Gaga testified that she traced her belief in Sebert to an encounter they had back in late 2008 or early 2009 at Gottwald’s home studio, where she saw the young singer on a bed. Gaga stood by Sebert even after Geragos had falsely indicated on Twitter that Gottwald had raped her, according to correspondence filed in court, testimony and Gottwald’s lawsuit against Geragos.
Gottwald and Max Martin produced some of Perry’s most iconic early hits. Perry and Sebert were friends before they were famous. Questioned under oath about Gottwald and Kesha, Perry said she felt “pressured” to support the singer and her allegations. But, she explained, “I also knew both of them and a lot of people did not. So it was easy for them to be disattached and support an idea rather than an actual instance.” In text messages with Gaga, Sebert claimed that Gottwald also raped Perry; under oath, Perry insisted the claim was false.
Once a guitarist in the “Saturday Night Live” band, Gottwald became one of the world’s most successful producers. The first artist he signed to a contract was Sebert in 2005, when she was 18 and he 32. Shortly after that, they went to a party at Paris Hilton’s mansion and spent the night at a nearby hotel. Years later, she accused him publicly of raping her, an allegation he forcefully denied. By then, Gottwald had become a renowned hitmaker for artists like Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Sebert. In the wake of the rape claim, Gottwald’s business “fell off a cliff,” according to testimony. A defamation suit he filed against Sebert made public thousands of pages of records, including a report by an expert hired by his team. The expert, Dr. Renee Binder, noted inconsistencies in Sebert’s account.
