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March Court Date Set For Hearing On Lawsuit Against DSK

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A March 15 hearing has scheduled for a lawsuit filed by the woman who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of raping her in a Manhattan hotel.

Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn last year, but his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, has continued to seek monetary damages in civil court.

The March hearing is being held to deal with issues that have to be resolved before a trial, which has yet to be scheduled.

Strauss-Kahn was indicted by a grand jury last year and paraded before the cameras after Diallo claimed she was sexually assaulted.

But the case was dropped when the Guinea native was caught lying about a number of issues in her past, raising significant credibility questions.

Strauss-Kahn returned to France after the charges were dropped and called his encounter with Diallo a "moral failing."

The lawsuit, which was filed in August of 2011, claims Diallo "did not know that defendant Strauss-Kahn was the head of the IMF…" at the time of the incident in May.

It also corrects media reports that she continued working after the alleged attack, saying "contrary to some reports, at no point and time did Ms. Diallo go back and clean."

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have asked the lawsuit be dismissed because he says he had diplomatic immunity. He isn't required to attend the March court session.

Diallo's lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, says she is "looking forward to her day in court and can't wait to get to trial.''

(TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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