Ruth's attorney filed an Anti-SLAPP motion in response to the singer's $2.3 Million countersuit filed earlier this month.
Nick Carter's ongoing legal battle rages on as Shannon Ruth -- one of the women who accused the singer of sexual battery -- is now filing to dismiss a countersuit Carter filed against her earlier this month.
In December, Ruth sued Carter for sexual battery over an alleged February 2001 incident she claims happened when she was 17. In response, Carter filed a counterclaim earlier this month against Ruth -- as well as two other accusers -- for $2.3 million, claiming these individuals have been trying to extort money from him for years.
On Wednesday, Ruth filed an Anti-SLAPP motion with the court in Clark County, Nevada, seeking to have Carter's countersuit dismissed.
"Carter’s Counterclaim is clearly intended for no other purpose than to harass, intimate, and potentially silence [Ruth]," the motion, obtained by ET on Thursday, claims. "He seeks to use his wealth and celebrity status to outlast Plaintiff, intimidate her, and possibly even silence her. All while hiding behind being the 'victim' of the '#MeToo' Movement and the preposterous notion that [Ruth] is only seeking attention and publicity."
"This is the very definition of a SLAPP lawsuit, and it should not be allowed to progress," the documents argue.
SLAPP lawsuits -- meaning "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation" -- are lawsuits filed against individuals in an effort to suppress free speech or intimidate people into not exercising their legal rights. Anti-SLAPP laws have been drafted in many states which aim to allow meritless SLAPP suits to get expeditiously dismissed.
Ruth's motion further requested that Carter be responsible for covering Ruth's court costs and attorney's fees if or when his counterclaim is dismissed.
ET has reached out to Carter's reps for comment.
According to Carter's countersuit, obtained by ET on Feb. 2, Carter alleges there's a conspiracy against him brought on by Ruth in conjunction with Melissa Schuman and her father, Jerome Schuman -- two other defendants in the countersuit -- that he claims has been years in the making.
According to the docs, Ruth's December lawsuit "is the culmination of an approximate five-year conspiracy orchestrated by Counter-Defendants to harass, defame and extort Carter."
The singer goes on to claim that "the campaign was launched and bolstered by the #MeToo movement, beginning at its dawn, when Counter-Defendant Melissa Schuman posted a salacious blog entry in November 2017, falsely asserting that she had been sexually assaulted by Carter in 2003." Carter goes on to claim that, after attacking him, Schuman and her father "were all too eager to welcome a groveling Ruth into their scheme."
Back in December, Ruth filed a lawsuit claiming Carter sexually assaulted her in February 2001, which Carter has vehemently denied. The singer's attorney, Michael Holtz, told ET, "This claim about an incident that supposedly took place more than 20 years ago is not only legally meritless but also entirely untrue." The attorney continued, "Unfortunately, for several years now, Ms. [Shannon] Ruth has been manipulated into making false allegations about Nick -- and those allegations have changed repeatedly and materially over time. No one should be fooled by a press stunt orchestrated by an opportunistic lawyer -- there is nothing to this claim whatsoever, which we have no doubt the courts will quickly realize."
Ruth claimed the alleged incident happened after a concert in Tacoma, Washington, on Carter's tour bus, where he's alleged to have assaulted her in the bathroom and in his bedroom. Following the allegations, ABC scrapped plans to air its planned Backstreet Boys holiday special, "A Very Backstreet Holiday."
In his countersuit, Carter refers to Ruth as a "vulnerable and highly impressionable individual craving attention and desperate to fit in." He claims the Schumans "groomed and coached Ruth, coaxing her to inflate her initial claim of being abused at the hands of a third-party, to being physically abused at the specific hands of Carter, and, finally, to being sexually assaulted by Carter."
For more on the ongoing legal battle, see the video below.
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