LA Reid settles sexual assault lawsuit by former Arista employee

LA Reid, the Grammy-winning music executive and former Arista Records chief executive, has settled a lawsuit by former employee Drew Dixon on the day the civil trial was due to begin. In 2023 Dixon alleged that Reid derailed her career after she rejected his advances in 2021, saying he groped, kissed and digitally penetrated her without consent on two occasions and that he had started harassing her soon after he began at Arista in 2000.

She claimed her budgets were slashed and proposed signings rejected after she rebuffed him; Reid denied the allegations. Dixon quit in 2002 to attend Harvard Business School and said in a 2023 statement provided by her lawyers that Reid’s “persistent campaign of sexual harassment and assault forced me to abandon the work I loved when I was at the top of my game in the music business”.

Reid left Arista in 2004 to work as CEO at Island Def Jam Music Group and later Epic Records, and in 2017 he stepped down from Epic following a harassment claim, the Hollywood Reporter reported. Dixon, now a board member at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, sued under New York State’s Adult Survivors Act, which in 2023 gave adults a year-long window to sue over alleged sexual abuses that occurred outside of the statute of limitations.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed, but both parties released statements.

Key Topics

Culture, La Reid, Drew Dixon, Arista Records, Adult Survivors Act, Clive Davis Institute