Roc Nation’s insurance company says it doesn’t need to pay for CEO Desiree Perez’s ongoing lawsuit with her daughter because it’s a strictly personal matter — and it’s suing her to prove it.
In a lawsuit filed Friday (April 7), New York Marine and General Insurance Co. asked a federal judge to rule that it has no obligation to defend Perez — the head of Jay-Z’s business empire — in litigation with her daughter Demoree Hadley, who has accused her mother of a range of legal wrongdoing.
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Because the court battle with Hadley arises from “their contentious mother-daughter relationship,” the insurance company says it’s not covered by Roc’s commercial liability policies.
“Mrs. Hadley’s claims against Mrs. Perez in the [lawsuit] are clearly not with respect to Mrs. Perez’s duties as Roc Nation’s Chief Executive Officer and are unrelated to Roc Nation’s business,” lawyers for New York Marine write in the lawsuit, obtained and first reported by Billboard. “Consequently, Mrs. Perez is not an ‘insured’ as defined by the policies.”
A spokesperson for Perez and an attorney for Hadley both declined to comment. An attorney for New York Marine did not immediately return a request for comment.
Perez has been quietly battling with her daughter in federal court for nearly a year. In April 2025, she sued Hadley’s husband, Javon Hadley, claiming he had trapped her daughter in a “dangerously abusive relationship” and that she was worried he “may kill her one day.”
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“Plaintiffs are living every family’s nightmare,” Perez’s lawyers wrote at the time. “By this lawsuit, plaintiffs are shouting from the rooftops for the world to hear that they love D.H., and her family will fight with every fiber of their beings to protect her.”
But in her own case filed against her mother a month later, Hadley told a very different story — about how Perez was a “convicted felon” who had “used her money, power, and influence to tear the Hadleys apart.”
The case claimed Perez had illegally surveilled her daughter, including by bugging her room and hacking her iCloud account. It also alleged she had used false allegations to get Javon wrongfully arrested several times, then had Hadley wrongly committed to a drug treatment facility. “It is difficult to imagine that a mother would do the acts listed below to her own child,” Hadley’s lawyers wrote at the time.
Both sides have denied any wrongdoing and moved to dismiss the other’s claims. But a judge has allowed parts of each side’s accusations to move ahead, and both cases are headed for more litigation and moving toward a potential trial.
According to this week’s new lawsuit, Perez invoked Roc’s commercial insurance policies in October, sending a letter that “demanded that NYM pay for her entire defense” in the battle with Hadley. Last month, the company says it sent a response denying coverage.
“Desiree does not meet the policies’ definition of ‘insured” for claims or damages caused by her personal conduct related to a dispute with her daughter and son-in-law, which is not with respect to her duties as Roc Nation’s CEO, outside the scope of her employment, and wholly unrelated to the conduct of Roc Nation’s business as a sports and entertainment agency,” the insurer wrote in the letter to Perez, which was attached as an exhibit to the lawsuit.
In the letter, the insurance company counter-offered: It would pay for her legal defense, but with the crucial caveat that it would reserve the right to recoup that money “to the extent there is a determination that NYM does not owe a defense or indemnity under the policies.” And in its lawsuit this week, the insurer is asking a federal judge to issue exactly that sort of determination.
“There is no reasonable possibility of providing coverage for Mrs. Perez for the claims against her in the amended complaint,” the company writes in the new case. “Accordingly, NYM is entitled to entry of a declaratory judgment that NYM has no duty to defend or indemnify Mrs. Perez.”
Hadley is also named as a defendant in New York Marine’s lawsuit. While there’s no suggestion that she also asked Roc’s insurance company to pay for her legal case, the insurer says that she is “an indispensable party to this action” because she’s the plaintiff in the underlying dispute.
