Meek Mill. Photo: Shutterstock

Amazon Studios, a subsidiary of the online retail giant, and the music management firm Roc Nation are hoping to erase a pair of lawsuits that a prominent Philadelphia attorney filed over an alleged surreptitiously recorded conversation where the lawyer appeared to make critical comments about his client, who is the judge at the center of rapper Meek Mill's probation violation case.

In September, criminal defense attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr. sued Amazon, Roc Nation and others over claims that they violated the Wiretap Act when he was recorded, allegedly without his knowledge, during the filming of a documentary produced by Amazon about Mill and the criminal justice system. According to Peruto, although he agreed to take part in the documentary, he made the statements at issue when he believed he was off-the-record and the camera was not recording. One of Peruto's lawsuits focuses on the alleged wiretap violation, while the other seeks to have the original recording returned to him and all the copies destroyed.

The defendants, however, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuits Wednesday, claiming Peruto failed to establish a Wiretap Act violation, and that recordings are not the type of property that can be recovered through an action for replevin.

In response to the replevin action, the defendants contend that Peruto's words are not physical property and are therefore not “goods or chattel” that can be recovered.

“Peruto cannot dodge this obvious bar to this replevin claim by seeking to cast the property at issue as 'digitized communication.' Under black-letter law, replevin, like the related tort of conversion, is not available to recover intangible personal property unless it is embodied in a physical object,” the defendants said in the joint filing. “The law thus provides that 'property' that exists only in digital form, such as social media accounts, software, satellite signals, and internet domain names, is not subject to conversion and cannot be recovered through a replevin action.”

The lawsuits stem from audio in which Peruto can be heard saying, among other things, that the conduct of his client, Philadelphia Judge Genece Brinkley, “looks fucking awful.” The audio was eventually leaked to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to Peruto, a portion of the audio was cut out of the leaked recording, which would have given the proper context to his comments, in which he said he praised the judge for following the law. He also said he made the comments off the record, and when he believed the camera had been turned off.

Regarding his claims that the defendants violated the Wiretap Act, Peruto has noted that Pennsylvania law requires both parties to consent to being recorded. However, the defendants contend that under the federal act, only consent from one of the parties is needed.

“By Peruto's own admission, a party to the communication consented to the interception, making it lawful under the Wiretap Act,” the motion said. “Simply put, because the recording itself and the subsequent dissemination of the recording were lawful, Peruto cannot state a federal Wiretap Act claim against any of the defendants as a matter of law.”

Peruto's attorney, Jim Beasley Jr. of The Beasley Firm, said Friday that Peruto also has pendant state Wiretap Act claims as well, and the single consent issue in the federal act mostly applies to criminal investigations. He gave the example of someone surreptitiously recording their partner during during sex.

“It's not a blanket immunity if one person decides they're going to lie,” Beasley said. “That would make the entire civil damages remedy useless.”

Judge Genece Brinkley.

Brinkley became the subject of much media attention after she sentenced Mill, whose real name is Robert Williams, to a lengthy jail sentence for a probation violation, even though neither Mill's probation officer nor the prosecutor on the case had sought jail time. The sentence garnered national attention and sparked an outcry for criminal justice reforms. It also led to a protracted appeals process, which has spurred hundreds of additional appeals involving cases from Mill's arresting officer, led one court employee to be fired, and raised an ethical cloud over Brinkley, which eventually led her to hire Peruto.

A footnote in the defendants' motion to dismiss challenges Peruto's characterization of the events and contends that the audio shows Peruto never asked to go off the record before making the statements.

The motions were filed by Ballard Spahr attorney Michael Berry on behalf of Amazon and Joshua Peles of Reed Smith, who is representing Roc Nation. Berry and Peles did not immediately return a call for comment, and Berry declined to comment.