In November 2022, Jimmy Iovine was riding high — as he had mostly done since co-founding Interscope Records in 1990 — when Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame as a recipient of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. Much can change in a year, as startling allegations against Iovine, 70, have surfaced this evening (November 22).
As first reported by Pitchfork, a summons has been filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York County on behalf of a woman publicly identified as Jane Doe. The publication relayed that “the lawsuit itself is forthcoming,” but Iovine is being sued for “alleged sexual misconduct and abuse.”
Pitchfork‘s Evan Minsker continued, “Doe claims that she was ‘sexually abused, forcibly touched, and subjected to sexual harassment and retaliation’ in August 2007. The lawsuit against Iovine is for assault and battery, as well as violations of the New York City Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act and the New York City Human Right Law.”
Shortly after Pitchfork broke the news, Billboard provided additional details:
“Though the full complaint is not yet available, a summons with notice was filed by the woman’s attorneys, Douglas Wigdor and Meredith Firetog at Wigdor Law. The case includes an accusation of ‘multiple instances’ of abuse along with a specific incident of sexual misconduct that occurred in New York in 2007. The woman is seeking economic and compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs.
The case against Iovine is just the latest in a string of sexual misconduct lawsuits filed over the last month against men in the music industry, including industry executives like L.A. Reid and superstar artists like Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Axl Rose. The spike in cases is due to the looming expiration at midnight Thursday [November 23] of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which created a one-year window for alleged survivors to take legal action over years-old accusations that would typically be barred under the statute of limitations. The summons effectively extends the deadline to submit a complete lawsuit.”
Iovine acted as Chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M until departing in August 2014 (as per Billboard at the time). Earlier that year, he and Dr. Dre sold their Beats Electronics and Beats Music to Apple “for a total of $3 billion,” Apple announced in May 2014. The acquisition “helped launch Apple Music,” as The New York Times put it in a December 2019 profile of Iovine.
Iovine retired from Apple in 2018.
