Sean “Diddy” Combs has been ordered to foot a hefty legal bill after unsuccessfully suing over the 2025 Peacock documentary The Making of a Bad Boy.
A Tuesday (Oct. 6) court order, obtained by Billboard, says Combs must repay $478,000 that NBCUniversal spent convincing a judge to dismiss the defamation lawsuit earlier this year. This amount, while significant, is only about half of the $990,000 charged by NBC’s attorneys at the elite law firm Gibson Dunn.
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Combs had sued NBC in early 2025 for $100 million, alleging The Making of a Bad Boy advanced a “false narrative” that he was involved in the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and Kim Porter. But Judge Phaedra F. Perry-Bond ruled this April that NBC followed the proper journalistic standards by making clear that Combs denies all such claims and that the interviewees who voiced the theories, including musician Al B. Sure!, had their own biases against the now-imprisoned mogul.
Judge Perry-Bond threw out Combs’ lawsuit under New York’s anti-SLAPP statute, which quickly disposes of meritless cases that threaten First Amendment-protected free speech. Under that law, a successful defendant can recoup the legal fees that they spent in the process.
The judge ruled Monday that NBC indeed qualifies for attorney fee reimbursement in this situation. The judge accepted the hourly billing rates charged by a team of six Gibson Dunn lawyers, ranging from $915 for a junior associate to $1,980 for a senior partner.
“Although the court is cognizant that the rates charged here are higher than the customary rates, due to the publicity, complexity, quantum of damages, caliber and experience of the attorneys, the results achieved and the quality of the submissions and performance at oral argument, the court declines any reduction of the defendants’ hourly rates,” wrote Judge Perry-Bond.
However, the judge did find that the amount of hours billed by Gibson Dunn was, at times, “excessive.” She trimmed a total of $512,000 from the $990,000 bill submitted by NBC — including $269,000 spent drafting a motion and $78,000 for internal office discussions — for a final fee award of $478,000.
Reps for NBC did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling Tuesday. A spokesperson for Combs told Billboard, “NBCUniversal sought nearly $1 million in attorneys’ fees, and the court found substantial portions of those fees excessive and unreasonable, cutting their request by more than half.”
Combs previously initiated the process of appealing to reinstate his claims against NBC, but the case was one of many dropped by his former law firm due to a money dispute last month. It was not immediately clear whether Combs still intends to pursue that appeal with different lawyers.
The Bad Boy Records founder is currently serving prison time for arranging cross-country prostitution events known as “freak-offs.” He’s appealing, saying the sentence was unduly harsh since jurors acquitted him of more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering charges. Meanwhile, Combs still faces dozens of ongoing civil sexual misconduct lawsuits, in which he denies all wrongdoing.
Combs’ lawsuit against NBC was one of several attempts he’s made to go on the offensive amid the harsh media scrutiny of the last several years. While his claims against NBC were unsuccessful, he’s having better luck with a different defamation case against NewsNation. In that matter, a judge ruled last month that Combs can pursue discovery over news broadcasts that suggested he laced baby oil with drugs to incapacitate alleged sexual assault victims.
