NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs has been accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in 2005, according to a new lawsuit that joins more than two dozen others accusing the music mogul of sexual misconduct.

The civil lawsuit was one of two filed on Monday in a New York state court in Manhattan by Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who says he represents more than 150 victims of Mr. Combs’ abuse, and has filed at least 17 lawsuits.

In Monday’s second lawsuit, another male accuser said he was a 17-year-old auditioning for the reality TV show Making the Band when Mr. Combs and a bodyguard sexually assaulted him in 2008.

“The lawyer behind this lawsuit is interested in media attention rather than the truth,” Mr. Combs’ lawyers said in a statement resembling those issued after earlier Buzbee lawsuits. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor.”

Mr. Combs, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to criminal sex trafficking charges in federal court in Manhattan, where he faces felony counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Federal prosecutors have accused the Bad Boy record label founder of coercing men, women, and children into sex acts without their consent, bribing and intimidating them into keeping quiet, and employing his staff to cover up his crimes.

Mr. Combs has been held for six weeks in a Brooklyn jail after being denied bail twice, and is appealing his detention.

In the complaint involving the 10-year-old, the California plaintiff known as John Doe said he was an aspiring actor and rapper when a consultant whom his parents had hired arranged an “audition” with Mr. Combs at a New York hotel.

According to the complaint, after Mr. Doe told Mr. Combs he would “do anything” to become a star, Combs gave him a soda spiked with drugs, pushed him down, and forced him to perform oral sex.

Mr. Doe said he lost consciousness, and upon waking was sore and had his pants undone. He said he cried and asked to see his parents, leading Mr. Combs to say he would hurt them “badly” if Mr. Doe revealed what happened, the complaint said.

In the second complaint, a different California plaintiff named John Doe said Mr. Combs forced him to perform oral sex on himself and the bodyguard, with Mr. Combs framing the latter as a “test” of how much Mr. Doe wanted to succeed in the music industry.

Mr. Doe failed the audition, after Mr. Combs deemed him “untrustworthy due to his reservations about performing oral sex on his bodyguard,” the complaint said.

Combs’ criminal trial is scheduled for May 5, 2025. — Reuters

POP SUPERSTAR Madonna persuaded a judge in Miami to throw out a lawsuit claiming she deceived concertgoers by taking the stage 90 minutes late at a concert in April.

Judge Jorge Perez Santiago of Miami-Dade County Court said at a hearing last week that the concert’s 8:30 p.m. start time was subject to change and that an opening act performed as planned before Madonna’s appearance.

The concertgoer alleged Madonna and the arena, Kaseya Center, violated Florida’s law against deceptive and unfair business practices by starting the concert late and for knowingly allowing the venue to be overheated.

Mr. Perez Santiago said there were no issues for a jury to resolve, and dismissed the case. The judge said the dispute over heat boiled down to a subjective feeling.

“If it was too hot for you, it’s too cold for somebody else,” Mr. Perez Santiago said at the Oct. 24 hearing, according to a transcript.

Marcus Corwin, an attorney for the concertgoer, told Reuters on Monday that he planned to appeal the dismissal ruling.

“My job is to help consumers get what they feel they’ve bargained for,” Mr. Corwin said in an interview.

Lawyers for Madonna and the arena, home to the Miami Heat professional basketball team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Corwin has two other similar pending lawsuits against Madonna before different judges in the same court. He said a judge in one of the cases had rejected Madonna’s early defense arguments.

Mr. Corwin, who is based in Florida, is also pursuing a separate class action over a late Madonna concert start in federal court in Washington, DC. In June, he voluntarily withdrew a lawsuit in New York that accused Madonna of starting concerts two hours late.

Madonna has denied the claims in all the cases.

The lawsuits in Miami-Dade County Court sought damages of under $8,000 for different nights of Madonna’s Celebration Tour in Miami.

Mr. Corwin at the Oct. 24 hearing accused Madonna of habitual lateness.

“I mean, this is not one night. They do this all the time,” he said.

Madonna’s lawyer Austin Flickstein countered that the plaintiff got what he paid for.

“It is not unreasonable for a headlining act to have someone come up and warm up the crowd,” Mr. Flickstein told the court. “Reasonable consumers know this.” — Reuters

LIVE NATION ENTERTAINMENT and its subsidiary Ticketmaster have failed to persuade a US appeals court to block a proposed class action accusing them of charging artificially high ticket prices.

The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a lower judge’s 2023 ruling that said Live Nation could not enforce contract provisions that required ticket buyers to arbitrate their claims rather than sue in federal court.

The appeals panel said the arbitration rules were unfair to consumers and “overtly” beneficial to defendants. The rules, which placed the ticketholders’ claims in the hands of a new arbitration body called New Era ADR, were “unconscionable and unenforceable,” the court said.

Beverly Hills-based Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New Era chief executive Rich Lee in a statement said the company, which is not a defendant, was disappointed by the court’s decision. Mr. Lee said New Era’s rules are “objective, easy to understand, and, most importantly, highly advantageous for any party with meritorious claims or defenses.”

The closely watched appeal tested the scope of companies’ power to compel buyers to arbitrate their disputes, including through “mass” arbitrations involving hundreds or thousands of claims.

Warren Postman, a lawyer for the consumers, welcomed the decision in a statement. He criticized what he called “corporate attempts to impose novel group procedures to gain tactical advantages over consumers and employees.”

The appeals panel found a key 2005 California Supreme Court opinion protecting class actions applied to the antitrust case against Live Nation and was not preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act.

New Era’s arbitration rules were an “inadequate vehicle” for the plaintiffs to resolve their claims, the three-judge panel said, with rules “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible.”

Live Nation has defended New Era, calling its rules “sensible, fair, and similar” to those at other platforms.

In May, the US Justice department and a group of states asked a US judge in Manhattan to break up Live Nation for allegedly violating antitrust law, claiming the company “suffocates its competition” in its control over ticket sales and pricing.

Live Nation in a statement then said there was more competition than ever before in the live events market. — Reuters