What Matters in the Court Fight

• A federal judge refused to dismiss Marcy Croft’s $25 million lawsuit, finding her allegations plausibly support defamation and defamation per se claims against Tony Buzbee and his law firm.
• An unusual state-law issue helped Croft keep additional claims alive because Mississippi recognizes causes of action that Texas does not.
• The ruling comes days after Buzbee’s former client recanted her rape allegation against Jay-Z and said she had never met the rapper.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

Tony Buzbee’s sprawling legal battle with Jay-Z and lawyers connected to Roc Nation has produced a significant new problem for the prominent Texas attorney — a $25 million defamation case against him is staying alive.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown on September 30 denied Buzbee and his law firm’s motion to dismiss or stay a lawsuit filed by Mississippi-based attorney Marcy Croft. The case is Croft v. Buzbee, No. 3:25-cv-422, in the Southern District of Texas.

That does not mean Buzbee has been found liable.

At this stage, the court generally accepts Croft’s well-pleaded factual allegations as true and asks whether they state legally plausible claims. Judge Brown concluded they do. The court said it could “reasonably infer” that Buzbee and his firm made defamatory statements accusing Croft of repeated illegal conduct.

Croft alleges Buzbee used social media to accuse her of orchestrating an illegal effort to solicit his former clients and offering money to persuade them to sue his firm. According to the court’s order, Buzbee allegedly published accusations involving barratry and other unlawful conduct to an Instagram audience exceeding 104,000 followers and repeated claims on Facebook. Croft maintains those accusations were false and damaged her professional reputation.

This is where the ruling becomes more interesting legally.

Croft asserted claims including defamation, defamation per se, false light invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. Buzbee argued that the false-light and negligent-emotional-distress claims should be dismissed because Texas does not recognize them.

The judge agreed about Texas law — but concluded Mississippi law applies to those claims because Croft lives, practices law and allegedly suffered the reputational injury there. Mississippi recognizes both causes of action. The result is a good example of how a lawsuit filed in Texas can still be governed, on individual claims, by another state’s substantive law.

Croft also survived on civil conspiracy. The court found she had plausibly alleged that Buzbee, his firm and former client José Maldonado worked together to create what Croft describes as a fake solicitation scenario and then spread accusations about her conduct. Again, those allegations remain disputed and have not been proven.

The judge also allowed Croft’s intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim to continue, finding that her allegations went beyond ordinary insults. Croft claims there was a coordinated attempt to intimidate, silence and entrap her after she began examining concerns involving Buzbee’s firm. The judge called the question close but found the allegations sufficient at the dismissal stage.

The case sits inside a much larger legal war tied to a lawsuit Buzbee previously filed for an anonymous woman who accused Shawn Jay-Z Carter and Sean Diddy Combs of raping her when she was 13. That lawsuit was later withdrawn.

Then came a major development.

In September, the former accuser signed a declaration recanting her accusation against Carter and stating she had never met him. She also said she had not reviewed the complaint before it was filed. Buzbee disputes her new account and is asking the court to strike the declaration. Carter’s lawyers say emails and text messages support her recantation.

That declaration does not prove Croft’s Texas defamation case. But it raises the stakes in the broader litigation because discovery could now expose communications, investigative steps, recordings and documents surrounding how these competing allegations were developed and published.

Buzbee told Reuters that Croft’s case is frivolous and predicted it will backfire. Croft’s attorney Gregg Costa said her legal team intends to pursue accountability for the alleged damage to her reputation.

The September 30 ruling settles none of those factual disputes.

It does something consequential nonetheless — it keeps the courthouse doors open.

About the Author

Samuel López is a reporter and news correspondent for USA Herald who has reported for the publication since 2022. López is also a seasoned legal professional with more than two decades of experience analyzing state and federal litigation, complex civil disputes and legal filings. His background in litigation analysis provides added context when reporting on procedural rulings, defamation claims, evidentiary disputes and the difference between allegations that survive dismissal and facts ultimately proven in court.

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