A California judge on Wednesday granted Harvey Weinstein’s request to dismiss actress Ashley Judd’s claims of sexual harassment, but Judd was empowered to continue her lawsuit against Weinstein, claiming defamation and blacklisting.
Judd’s sexual harassment claim was brought under a California state statute that prohibits sexual harassment by a defendant who is in a “business, service, or professional relationship” with the plaintiff. Weinstein argued that at the time of the alleged hotel room encounter, during which Judd said he sexually harassed her, the two of them were not in a business, service, or professional relationship.
The judge disagreed with Judd’s argument that her relationship with Weinstein at the time was “substantially similar” to the business or professional relationships expressed in the statute.
“For the foregoing reasons, [Weinstein’s] motion to dismiss is granted in part and denied in part,” U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez wrote in a court filing. “The court dismisses [Judd’s] second cause of action for sexual harassment in violation of California Civil Code § 51.9. [Judd] may proceed on her claims for defamation, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and violation of the [unfair competition law].”
Judd does have an opportunity to file an amended complaint for her sexual harassment claim. A lawyer for Judd said on Wednesday that they were happy with the court’s decision and will move forward with the lawsuit.
“We are very pleased that today the District Court held that Ashley Judd can proceed with her lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and continue her effort to vindicate the wrongs he committed against her among so many other women,” Judd’s lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. said in a statement. “We are also pleased that the court gave us an opportunity to amend our complaint and present additional facts related to one of Ms. Judd’s claims. We will move forward immediately with discovery, including Mr. Weinstein’s deposition, and look forward to proving to a jury at trial that Mr. Weinstein defamed Ms. Judd, interfered with her ability to earn a living, and engaged in unlawful business practices. The law should not tolerate this abuse of power to damage another’s career. ”
A representative for Weinstein’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
In mid-July, Weinstein sought to have Judd’s case dismissed on the grounds that she waited too long to sue. Judd’s original complaint from April said she lost numerous lucrative acting opportunities after rebuking the mogul’s advances in the 1990s.
Among them, Judd says she lost out on a part in “Lord of the Rings” after Weinstein told director Peter Jackson that Judd was difficult to work with. Weinstein has denied doing so.
Judd was the first actress to be named on the record with her account of Weinstein’s widely alleged predation over the decades. Speaking with the New York Times, Judd described an incident in the ’90s where she said Weinstein asked to massage her in a hotel room and pressured her to watch him shower during a meeting.
She said she remembered thinking: “How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?”
The Times report said other accusers generally received between $80,000 and $150,000 in payouts each to make accusations go away. Judd was not one of the women who received a settlement, the report said.
Weinstein has consistently denied any instance of nonconsensual sex. In the subsequent time since the article’s publication, Judd has been a prominent face of the #MeToo and Time’s Up equity movements.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this reporting
Harvey Weinstein Scandal: A Timeline of a Hollywood Mogul's Downfall (Photos)
Harvey Weinstein was once the king of the indie film world. But the Oscar-winning producer's career and reputation have imploded since fall 2017, when scores of women stepped forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. Three years later, Weinstein is now a convicted rapist serving out a 23-year prison sentence in New York as he awaits another criminal trial in Los Angeles. Here's a breakdown of what has happened since 2017.
OCT. 5, 2017
The New York Times publishes a story revealing that Harvey Weinstein had paid financial settlements to at least eight women who have accused him of sexual harassment or assault. Actress Ashley Judd is the only accuser to go on the record, accusing the mogul of assaulting her in his hotel room. In a statement, Weinstein apologizes, vows to take a self-imposed leave of absence from his company, and bizarrely declares war on the NRA.
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OCT. 6, 2017
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, as well as other Congressional Democrats, donate campaign contributions they received from Weinstein to charity.
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OCT. 8, 2017
Weinstein is fired as CEO from The Weinstein Company.
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OCT. 10, 2017
The New Yorker publishes its own piece, written by Ronan Farrow, in which three women, including Italian actress Asia Argento, accuse Weinstein of rape. Through a spokesperson, Weinstein denies any account of nonconsensual sex.
Hours after the New Yorker article runs, the New York Times publishes on-the-record accusations of inappropriate behavior from Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.
BAFTA suspends Weinstein’s membership. AMPAS holds a special meeting to consider consequences for Weinstein’s “repugnant” actions.
Model and actress Cara Delevingne also comes forward on Oct. 11 to accuse Weinstein of making sexually inappropriate comments and harassing her.
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OCT. 12, 2017
The NYPD and London’s Metro Police both launch criminal investigations of Weinstein. On social media, Rose McGowan accuses Weinstein of raping her. (He has consistently denied engaging in nonconsensual sex.)
OCT. 13, 2017
Director Quentin Tarantino, arguably Weinstein’s greatest discovery, says he is “heartbroken” by the scandal. A petition to expel Weinstein from AMPAS passes 100,000 signatures.
OCT. 14, 2017
The AMPAS Board of Governors expels Weinstein. The Weinstein Company’s development slate falls apart, losing projects with David O. Russell and more. Release of Benedict Cumberbatch’s "The Current War" is delayed.
OCT. 15, 2017
Actress Alyssa Milano kicks off a cultural movement by encouraging women to share their stories of sexual harassment and assault on social media. She asks them to tag the stories #MeToo.
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy vows to start an industry-wide commission to create “protections against harassment and abuse.” Frequent Weinstein collaborator and filmmaker Kevin Smith vows to donate all of his Weinstein Company residuals to Women in Film.
OCT. 25, 2017
The Taylor Sheridan film "Wind River," which had a successful release by the Weinstein Company in August, excises the Weinstein name from its home video and streaming releases. Principal financier Acadia Entertainment buys the film back from TWC and self-funds an awards campaign. (It doesn't land any Oscar nominations.)
NOV. 6, 2017
The Television Academy bans Weinstein for life. The New Yorker runs a follow-up piece saying a battery of former Mossad agents and communications experts were used to silence stories of Weinstein’s impropriety for years.
NOV. 15, 2017
TWC is hit with a class-action lawsuit from several of Weinstein’s accusers. The company is forced to sell its live-action "Paddington 2" to Warner Bros. to help infuse the studio with cash and keep the doors open.
DEC. 6, 2017
The Academy announces its “standards of conduct,” which read, in part, “The Academy is categorically opposed to any form of abuse, harassment or discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, age, religion, or nationality.”
JAN. 1, 2018
#TimesUp is born as four female talent agents from CAA create a legal defense fund for women in the U.S. workforce to protect them from sexual harassment. The effort is announced and endorsed by contributors like Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Fox Film head Stacey Snider, Fox TV honcho Dana Walden, Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, among others.
JANUARY 7, 2018
To draw attention to the mistreatment of women in Hollywood, virtually all women attending the Golden Globes wear black.
JANUARY 8, 2018
Immediately after he wins a Golden Globe wearing a #TimesUp pin, James Franco is accused of sexual misconduct by several women. The accusations, which the actor denies, come in the middle of the Oscar nomination voting period.
JANUARY 9, 2018
Lady Bird writer-director Greta Gerwig joins Mira Sorvino, Chloe Sevigny and others in saying she would not work in the future with director Woody Allen, who had been accused of sexual assault by his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow. (He has repeatedly denied the accusation.)
JAN. 10, 2018
Page Six reports that Weinstein and Chapman reached the terms of an eight-figure divorce settlement, with Chapman securing primary custody of the couple's two children.
JAN. 27, 2018
The Academy emails members to reveal the process by which violations of its code of conduct can be reported.
FEB. 6, 2018
“I may be a 75-year-old white male,” says Academy President John Bailey at the annual Oscar Nominees Luncheon, “but I’m as gratified as any of you that the fossilized bedrock of many of Hollywood’s worst abuses [is] being jackhammered into oblivion.” (One month later, the Academy would investigate -- and then dismiss -- accusations of sexual harassment against Bailey himself.)
FEB. 8, 2018
Los Angeles police send three sexual assault cases concerning Weinstein to the city’s district attorney for possible charges.
MARCH 19, 2018
The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, reporting that it had less than $500,000 in cash on hand. Dallas-based Lantern Capital Partners stepped up as a stalking horse bidder prepared to buy virtually all of the company’s assets for $310 million.
Despite a last-minute bid from Broadway producer Howard Kagan’s Inclusion Media, a Delaware bankruptcy judge approves Lantern Capital's purchase of The Weinstein Company's assets.
MAY 25, 2018
Following a months-long investigation by the NYPD, Weinstein is arrested on three felony charges of rape and criminal sex act in connection with two female accusers. Weinstein pleads not guilty and released on $1 million bail pending trial.
MAY 30, 2018
Weinstein is indicted on charges of rape in the first and third degrees, as well as on charges of criminal sexual act in the first degree, as announced by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Then on June 1, Three women filed additional charges against Weinstein in a class action lawsuit, saying that Weinstein isolated the women “in an attempt to engage in unwanted sexual conduct that took many forms: flashing, groping, fondling, harassing, battering, false imprisonment, sexual assault and attempted rape, and/or completed rape.”
A grand jury served Weinstein with three more sexual assault charges, an additional count of criminal sexual act in the first degree for forcing a woman to have sex with him in 2006, and two counts of predatory sexual assault. The latter charge carries a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of a life sentence. Weinstein would plead not guilty.
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AUG. 3, 2018
Weinstein made a push to have a New York judge toss out a criminal sexual assault case brought against him, saying in a filing that the Manhattan district attorney “failed to provide the Grand Jury with exculpatory evidence of the long-term, consensual, intimate relationship between Mr. Weinstein and the alleged rape victim.”
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AUG. 19, 2018
A report in the New York Times said Asia Argento paid a settlement of $380,000 to actor Jimmy Bennett after accusing her of sexually assaulting him when he was just 17. Argento denied the accusations. Rose McGowan distanced herself from Argento, and Weinstein issued a statement saying Argento displayed a “stunning level of hypocrisy.” “The sheer duplicity of her conduct is quite extraordinary and should demonstrate to everyone how poorly the allegations against Mr. Weinstein were actually vetted and accordingly, cause all of us to pause and allow due process to prevail, not condemnation by fundamental dishonesty,” the statement continued.
AUG. 30, 2018
Former NBC News producer Richard McHugh said that people at “the very highest levels of NBC” worked to quash Ronan Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein story that eventually published in The New Yorker. Then on Sept. 3, NBC News Chairman Andy Lack sent an internal memo saying that after eight months, Farrow's reporting “did not have a single victim or witness willing to go on the record.” Farrow disputed the memo and said NBC's list of sources was incomplete.
SEPT. 6, 2018
The U.S. Attorney’s office in New York opened an investigation into Weinstein’s involvement with the private spy firm Black Cube to see if he violated any federal wire fraud laws. Weinstein had hired Black Cube to gather information on those accusing him of sexual assault.
AUG. 26, 2019
Weinstein is indicted on two new charges of predatory sexual assault. He faces seven counts, including first-degree and third-degree rape.
The new indictment also allows for Annabella Sciorra to testify at his trial. Though Weinstein cannot be charged for raping Sciorra at her apartment in 1993, as she had said in a 2017 interview with the New Yorker, the actress’ testimony could strengthen the D.A.’s case against Weinstein.
The criminal trial, originally scheduled to begin on Sept. 9, is also pushed back to Jan. 2020.
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SEPT. 6, 2019
A judge grants the consolidation of charges against Weinstein, bringing the count back down to five. The consolidation, which was voluntarily requested by the district attorney’s office, dismisses prosecutors’ earlier charges of predatory sexual assault and essentially replaces them with the two new charges of predatory sexual assault that were included in the indictment last month.
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SEPT. 10, 2019
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the New York Times reporters who first broke the Weinstein story, publish their book "She Said," which chronicles their investigation into the mogul and the aftermath of their initial story.
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OCT. 15, 2019
Ronan Farrow publishes "Catch and Kill," his own recounting of reporting on Weinstein and the roadblocks he faced while trying to publish his work at NBC News. The book includes damning revelations about NBC News' leadership and a detailed accusation of rape against Matt Lauer. (Lauer has denied the accusation, and NBC News has repeatedly denied many of the details in the book.)
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DEC. 11, 2019
Weinstein and his accusers reach a tentative $25 million settlement. $6.2 million will be split between 18 women, with none of them receiving more than $500,000 individually. The remaining $18.5 million would be set aside as a pool of money for participants in a class-action suit against Weinstein, the New York Attorney General's civil suit, or future claimants. The $25 million is part of a larger $47 million settlement for TWC to close out its remaining obligations.
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Time's Up denounces the tentative settlement, describing it as emblematic of a "broken system that privileges powerful abusers at the expense of survivors."
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DEC. 11, 2019
After accusations of ankle bracelet tampering, Weinstein's bail is increased to $5 million.
As court was convening, a group of "silence breakers" — including Rosanna Arquette, Rose McGowan, Lou Godbold, Sarah Ann Masse, Dominique Huett, Lauren Sivan, and Paula Williams — hold a press conference outside the courtroom to call on Weinstein to be held accountable for his actions.
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Just hours after Weinstein left the courtroom after the first day of his trial, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced new charges of sexual assault against the ex-mogul: one felony count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force, and sexual battery by restraint.
An arraignment date has not yet been set, but a spokesperson for the DA's office told The Wrap that they expect to wait until Weinstein's trial in New York is complete first.
Weinstein's bail is set to $5 million and, if convicted, he faces up to 28 years in prison.
The jury is selected for Weinstein's criminal trial. The 12-person panel includes seven men and five women. Three alternates are also chosen to sit in on the trial proceedings, should any of the chosen jurors need to be dismissed.
"Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra testifies that Weinstein barged into her Gramercy Park apartment around 1993 or early 1994, raped her, and then orally sexually assaulted her.
“My body shut down,” she said. “It was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual. I didn’t really even know what was happening. It was like a seizure or something."
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JAN. 27, 2020
Miriam Haley (née Mimi Haleyi), a former production assistant on the Weinstein-produced TV show "Project Runway," testifies that Weinstein pushed her down onto a bed, pulled out her tampon, and orally sexually assaulted her.
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JAN. 29, 2020
Dawn Dunning, a former aspiring actress now working as a costume designer, testifies as one of the prosecution's "prior bad acts" witnesses. Dunning says Weinstein put his hand up her skirt and touched her genitals in 2004 and then, later, propositioned her for a threesome with one of his assistants in exchange for movie roles.
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FEB. 24, 2020
After four days of deliberations, a New York jury convicts Weinstein of third-degree rape and a criminal sexual act, but finds him not guilty of the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault.
The Los Angeles District Attorney adds another charge against Weinstein based on a new accusation that Weinstein sexually assaulted a third woman in 2010 at a Beverly Hills hotel. If convicted, he faces up to 29 years in prison in L.A.
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JULY 14, 2020
A judge rejects a proposed settlement between Weinstein's accusers and the bankrupt Weinstein Company. The proposed settlement would've included an $18.9 million victims' fund.
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JULY 29, 2020
An appeals court rules that Ashley Judd is allowed to pursue her sexual harassment claim against Weinstein in court.
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SEPTEMBER 18, 2020
Queen Elizabeth II strips Weinstein of his Commander of the Order of the British Empire title, which was given to Weinstein in 2004. The top U.K. title is typically given to someone who has made a great impact through their work but can be revoked if the person has "done something to damage the honours system’s reputation," according to guidance from the British government.
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OCTOBER 2, 2020
Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey announces six additional sexual assault charges against Weinstein, making for a total of 11 felony counts: four counts of forcible rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery by restraint and one count of sexual penetration by use of force. If convicted, Weinstein faces up to 140 years to life in prison.
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JAN. 25, 2021
A federal bankruptcy judge approves a settlement plan with the bankrupt Weinstein Company that will create a $17.1 million fund for Harvey Weinstein’s victims. The victims’ fund will be divided among more than 50 claimants and will resolve most of the sexual assault and harassment claims against the former producer.
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APRIL 5, 2021
Weinstein files an appeal to his conviction in the New York case. The 166-page appeal argues that a specific juror who had written a novel about “predatory older men” and the admission of prior bad acts witnesses affected Weinstein's ability to have a fair trial.
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APRIL 12, 2021
Weinstein is indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury on 11 sexual assault charges, his attorney reveals at an extradition hearing in New York's Erie County. The former producer's extradition to California is still delayed, however, due to some errors in paperwork.
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A chronological look at how the indie mogul’s career and reputation unraveled
Harvey Weinstein was once the king of the indie film world. But the Oscar-winning producer's career and reputation have imploded since fall 2017, when scores of women stepped forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. Three years later, Weinstein is now a convicted rapist serving out a 23-year prison sentence in New York as he awaits another criminal trial in Los Angeles. Here's a breakdown of what has happened since 2017.
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