NEW YORK —
An appellate court has ruled for music producer Dr. Luke on an important legal question in his defamation suit against pop star Kesha, saying Thursday that he isn’t a public figure in the eyes of the law.
The decision isn’t a final judgment in the long-running court clash between the multiplatinum-selling singer, who says Dr. Luke raped her, and the Grammy-nominated hitmaker, who denies it and says his onetime protégé smeared him with lies.
But the ruling upholds a lower court’s 2020 finding that Kesha made a defamatory statement about him — to Lady Gaga — and that she can’t defend it by saying that Dr. Luke is a public figure. That matters because public figures have to meet a higher legal standard than everyday people do in order to prove they’ve been defamed.