He must have been fitted for a tuxedo every year for decades. Five months ago, he was fitted for a black ReliAlertTXC ankle monitor.
Somewhere in the states of New York or Connecticut, Harvey Weinstein wears this 9.87-ounce accessory that will surely never appear on the Academy Awards red carpet. He is waiting to find out if he will go to prison for the rest of his life.
In New York, the charges he faces include two counts of predatory sexual assault, for which the maximum sentence is life in prison. But that is just a sliver of the sprawling, complicated legal picture which has Weinstein at its center.
The cases involving this man span the country and the world. Investigations into his allegedly rampant sexual violence are not just underway in New York, but Los Angeles and London as well. Even Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, are looking into a reported 1991 sexual assault by Weinstein in Ireland.
He has been sued for rape, for sexual harassment and sex trafficking, for battery and false imprisonment, for civil battery and assault, for infliction of emotional distress and defamation, for fraudulent business acts and racketeering.
And that’s just Harvey.
The vast apparatus Weinstein allegedly deployed to facilitate and conceal his violence — attorneys, private investigators, employees at Miramax and the Weinstein Company who served as honeypots, enablers, and smokescreens — has been named in two class action lawsuits as the “Weinstein Sexual Enterprise.”
What’s more, the case against Weinstein involves other powerful men who, through through apparent avarice and cruelty, share headlines with the former film mogul. There’s Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance, Jr., who declined to pursue charges against Weinstein back in 2015 — even though the NYPD had Weinstein’s confession on tape — who is now under investigation for his mishandling of Weinstein’s case.
There’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo who, like Vance, has been the beneficiary of some questionably-timed campaign donations from attorneys employed by Weinstein. One of those attorneys is David Boies, who personally signed a contract with Black Cube, a corporate intelligence agency, to dig up dirt on Weinstein’s accusers and suppress the publication of investigations into Weinstein.
And then, there are the cases being made by accusers — some of whom are boldfaced names; some known only as Jane Doe — who are making unprecedented claims about long-tolerated “casting couch” practices, challenging the very infrastructure on which so much of Hollywood is built.
ThinkProgress is following the myriad alleged crimes and ongoing punishments in the Harvey Weinstein universe with a focus on New York, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and London. This comprehensive timeline, which tracks the sprawling array of legal entanglements, will be updated as the Weinstein cases continue to unfold.
The 1990s
Weinstein reaches multiple settlements with women during this decade.
“Among the recipients… [are] a young assistant in New York in 1990, an actress in 1997, [and] an assistant in London in 1998,” the New York Times will eventually report.
The actress involved in the 1997 settlement is Rose McGowan, who was 23 years old at the time she reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein. As the Times will eventually report, “The $100,000 settlement was ‘not to be construed as an admission’ by Mr. Weinstein, but intended to ‘avoid litigation and buy peace,’ according to the legal document.”
March 27, 2015
Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a Filipina-Italian model, reports to the New York police Department that Weinstein “lunged at her, groping her breasts and attempting to put a hand up her skirt while she protested” earlier that evening, as Ronan Farrow will later report for the New Yorker.
That same night, Gutierrez takes a call from Weinstein. The NYPD Special Victims Division, who is with her and is listening in on the call, plans for Gutierrez to see Weinstein again while wearing a wire for the purpose of “attempt[ing] to extract a confession or an incriminating statement.” The following day, she and the NYPD execute this sting operation; Weinstein admits to groping her and calls it something he is “used to” doing.
As Farrow will report in 2017:
Two sources close to the police investigation of Weinstein said that they had no reason to doubt Gutierrez’s account of the incident. One of them, a police source, said that the department had collected more than enough evidence to prosecute Weinstein. But the other said that Gutierrez’s statements about her past complicated the case for the office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr.
April 10, 2015
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declines to file charges against Weinstein. The D.A.’s office, under the direction of district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., releases a statement: “This case was taken seriously from the outset, with a thorough investigation conducted by our Sex Crimes Unit. After analyzing the available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported.”
As New York magazine will later report, “Weinstein’s team, which smeared Battilana in the press as a gold digger, reached a settlement requiring her to turn over a copy she possessed of the phone call recorded by the [Special Victims Division].”
Months after declining to pursue the case, Vance will accept a $10,000 political donation from David Boies, an attorney for Weinstein who (as a future New Yorker story by Farrow will reveal) worked with private investigation organization Black Cube on Weinstein’s behalf to spy on Weinstein’s would-be accusers and attempt to crush the publication of stories about Weinstein’s misconduct, including the story that ultimately ran in The New York Times.
April 20, 2015
Ambra Battilana Gutierrez signs a non-disclosure agreement with Weinstein. As Ronan Farrow will report years later, “In exchange for a million-dollar payment from Harvey Weinstein, Gutierrez would agree never to talk publicly about an incident during which Weinstein groped her breasts and tried to stick his hand up her skirt.”
October 5, 2017
The New York Times publishes its explosive Weinstein investigation by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey: “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades.” Their report found Weinstein had reached at least eight settlements with women” after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact.”
Weinstein denies all allegations of nonconsensual sexual contact. He and his representatives decline to comment on any of the settlements. Instead, he issues a rambling, near-incoherent non-apology.
October 8, 2017
Harvey Weinstein is fired by The Weinstein Company (TWC).
October 10, 2017
The New Yorker publishes Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein investigation, “From Aggressive Overtures to sexual assault: Harvey Weinstein’s accusers tell their stories.”
It makes public, for the first time, the substance of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez’s allegations and her experience with the NYPD, along with the audio recording from the 2015 sting operation.
The New York Times publishes its second piece in its Weinstein investigation. In the story by Jodi Kantor and Rachel Abrams, Gwyneth Paltrow describes sexual harassment and attempted violence by Weinstein. Angelina Jolie, too, says Weinstein made advances on her in a hotel room. Rosanna Arquette and Judith Godrèche come forward as well, as do women who were aspiring actresses at the time they met Weinstein.
October 11, 2017
Weinstein hires criminal defense lawyer Blair Berk, a West Hollywood-based attorney whose previous clients include Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kanye West.
October 12, 2017
The NYPD begins a review to determine if it should open a criminal investigation into Weinstein based on a sexual assault allegation from 2004 by Lucia Evans (then Lucia Stoller).
London’s Metropolitan Police force also opens an investigation into Weinstein. As the Associated Press reports, the claim concerns “an alleged sexual assault in the London area in the 1980s.” (Though British police don’t identify suspects who haven’t been charged, British media outlets including the BBC and the Guardian identify Weinstein as the suspect.)
The New York Post reports that Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance accepted $26,550 in campaign donations from Elkan Abramowitz, Weinstein’s former defense attorney — including $2,100 after Vance declined to pursue a case against Weinstein in 2015.
October 14, 2017
Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance launches an independent review of past campaign contributions following reports on his acceptance of donations from Abramowitz, who “helped Weinstein skate on sexual assault charges in 2015,” the New York Post writes.
On top of the Weinstein connection, Abramowitz is a partner at the firm where Vance worked before he was elected. Sources tell the Post he donated more than $26,000 in campaign money to Vance.
Vance’s probe will be led by the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI).
October 19, 2017
The Los Angeles Police Department opens an investigation into Harvey Weinstein following a new allegation of sexual assault by an “unnamed Italian model/actress” who says Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in Los Angeles in 2013, THR reports.
The alleged rape falls within the 10-year statute of limitations that existed in California at the time. (As of the start of 2017, there is no longer a statute of limitations on sex crimes in the state of California.)
October 31, 2017
The Beverly Hills Police Department confirms it is investigating complaints on Weinstein (as well as James Toback).
The London Metropolitan Police widens their Weinstein investigation, which now encompasses 11 allegations made by seven women. The allegations go back as far as the early 1980s and continue through 2014. Two of the allegations concern sexual assault outside of the UK and are passed along to the local police forces.
November 6, 2017
The New Yorker publishes Farrow’s second story on Weinstein, “Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies,” which details how Weinstein “hired private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists” in order to intimidate would-be public accusers and suppress news stories about his misconduct.
To this end, Weinstein employs Kroll, “one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives ‘highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,’ according to its literature.”
Farrow also reports that Weinstein’s attorneys were directly involved in these intimidation efforts — including David Boies, who “personally signed the contract directing Black Cube to attempt to uncover information that would stop the publication of a Times story about Weinstein’s abuses, while his firm was also representing the Times, including in a libel case.” The next day, the New York Times fires Boies’ firm:
“We never contemplated that the law firm would contract with an intelligence firm to conduct a secret spying operation aimed at our reporting and our reporters. Such an operation is reprehensible, and the Boies firm must have known that its existence would have been material to our decision whether to continue using the firm. Whatever legalistic arguments and justifications can be made, we should have been treated better by a firm that we trusted.”
November 14, 2017
An unnamed actress sues Weinstein for rape in Beverly Hills, TMZ reports. Jane Doe claims Weinstein, with whom she’d had meetings in previous years, met Weinstein at the Montage hotel in Beverly Hills to discuss acting on a TV show called Marco Polo. During this encounter, Doe alleged that Weinstein “gripped her wrists with one hand while using the other to masturbate in front of her until completion.”
In 2016, she says she met him again, also at the Montage, ostensibly to “celebrate her upcoming role in Marco Polo.”
She says he excused himself, came back out in a bathrobe, grabbed her, threw her on the bed, pulled down her jeans and began orally copulating her. She says she pushed his head off and ordered him to stop. She says he then used his ‘massive weight and strength’ to force himself on her, pushing his penis inside of her vagina without a condom.
She says she never actually got the Marco Polo role.
Jane Doe also sues The Weinstein Company, alleging that the organization was aware of Weinstein’s “casting couch” abuses.
November 15, 2017
A class action lawsuit is filed against The Weinstein Company in federal court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit “is the first to seek class-action status with a growing number of women in Hollywood who allege they were sexually assaulted and harassed by the movie mogul,” the L.A. Times reports.
As ThinkProgress wrote at the time, the lawsuit is rooted in a complaint from an unnamed woman (Jane Doe 1 in the documents) “on behalf of all women” who met with Weinstein for professional reasons only to find those meetings were a ruse to lure them into situations where Weinstein harassed or assaulted them. There are “hundreds of female actors” like Jane Doe, who, once “isolated” with Weinstein, were the victims of his “flashing, groping, fondling, battering, sexual assault, attempted rape and/or completed rape.”
November 27, 2017
Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, and The Weinstein Company are sued on sex trafficking charges in U.S. District Court in Southern District of New York.
Kadian Noble, a British actress, claims she was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at Cannes in 2014, after he lured her into his hotel room under the pretense of reviewing her film reel. According to Noble’s lawsuit, Weinstein molested her and forced her to watch him masturbate in the bathroom.
Noble’s lawyers argue the assault is, legally, the same thing as forced prostitution. Weinstein’s lawyers want the lawsuit dismissed, saying “nothing of value was exchanged” between the two and that the lawsuit “would unfairly expand the federal sex trafficking statute to all sexual activity occurring between adults in which one party holds a superior position of power and influence.”
December 6, 2017
Six women file a class action lawsuit against “the Weinstein Sexual Enterprise” in New York federal court. Targeting the Weinstein Company, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and a number of other former Weinstein company board members for racketeering, civil battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The women—all of whom say in the lawsuit that they were assaulted by Weinstein in the process of auditioning for him, pitching him projects, or working on Miramax or Weinstein Company projects—are bringing forth the lawsuit individually and “on behalf of all others similarly situated.” The lawsuit states that “there are dozens, and likely hundreds, of proposed Class members.” Most of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have already come forward with their stories, including actress Katherine Kendall, who says she was chased around a hotel room by Weinstein, and actress Louisette Weiss, who says she was asked to watch the producer masturbate.
According to the lawsuit, these women say that Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct could not occur without the help of several individuals and firms that they dub “the Weinstein Sexual Enterprise.” It was Weinstein and this enterprise, according to the lawsuit, that harassed, threatened, extorted, and misled “both Weinstein’s victims and the media to prevent, hinder and avoid the prosecution, reporting, or disclosure of his sexual misconduct.”
January 2, 2018
It is confirmed that two assault cases against Weinstein, filed by the Beverly Hills Police Department, were sent to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office sometime in December.
January 6, 2018
Actress Paz de la Huerta, who accused Weinstein of raping her twice in 2010, sues him in Los Angeles Superior Court for spying on her. Paz de la Huerta, who accused Weinstein of raping her twice in 2010, sues him in Los Angeles Superior Court for spying on her. Huerta says Weinstein used his New York attorney, Michael F. Rubin, “of seeking to gain information from de la Huerta last fall, while also discouraging her from pursuing criminal charges against Weinstein,” Variety reports.
February 3, 2018
The Metropolitan Police confirm they are looking into two more women’s sexual assault allegations against Weinstein. This brings the total of women who reported Weinstein accusations to the Metropolitan Police to nine.
As the BBC reports, the alleged offenses were “reported to police in October and November, took place in the Republic of Ireland in 1991, Westminster in 2011 and abroad in 2010, the Metropolitan Police said.” The report made in October was passed along by Scotland Yard, the headquarters for the Metropolitan police, to Garda Síochána, the Irish police force.
February 8, 2018
Reuters reports that Los Angeles prosecutors are reviewing three accusations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein.
February 12, 2018
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office files a civil rights lawsuit against The Weinstein Company. Based on a four-month investigation by the A.G.’s office, the suit claims TWC violated civil and human rights as well as business laws and failed to protect its employees from “unrelenting sexual harassment, intimidation and discrimination” by Weinstein.
As THR reports, “The suit calls for civil penalties of $500 to $250,000 for each violation of law be paid to the state of New York; restitution and damages be paid to the victims; freeing women from any NDAs they have signed; and prohibits any business deals that that would allow the Weinsteins to evade compliance.”
February 28, 2018
The Metropolitan Police receives an allegation against Weinstein by a woman who says he sexually assaulted her in Westminster in the mid-1990s. She is the tenth woman who has reported Weinstein to the British police.
As the Guardian reports, Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan’s police headquarters, does not name Weinstein (as is their standard practice in these cases) but confirms “that officers from the Metropolitan police child abuse and sexual offences command had received allegations of sexual assault from 10 people under Operation Kaguyak.”
March 18, 2018
New York publishes a story on Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance’s reported interference in what would have been the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein by the NYPD’s top sex-crimes investigator in 2015. The piece is “the first detailed account of… how the police became convinced that Vance’s office was systematically working to derail the investigation.”
On the heels of the New York story, Time’s Up, the Hollywood-founded initiative and legal defense fund to combat workplace sexual harassment and gender inequality, releases an open letter to New York Gov. Andrea Cuomo on The Cut.
Time’s Up is calling for Cuomo to open an investigation into Vance and his office, per their failure to prosecute Weinstein back in 2015.
Reports that District Attorney Cyrus Vance could have been improperly influenced by Mr. Weinstein and/or his representatives, and that senior officials within the DA’s office may have sought to intimidate Battilana are particularly disturbing and merit investigation. Similarly, reports that the New York Police Department chose to isolate Battilana from Vance’s staff because they feared his office was actively working to discredit her story demand immediate scrutiny.
Time’s Up also points to “what appears to be the negative relationship between the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Special Victims Unit of the NYPD,” which the organization fears “makes it even less likely that victims who have been assaulted by rich or powerful men will be willing to come forward and that their assailants will be prosecuted and convicted.”
March 19, 2018
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces the state attorney general will review Vance’s handling of the Weinstein case.
April 30, 2018
Ashley Judd sues Weinstein in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming he spread lies about her to deliberately destroy her career after she rejected his sexual advances.
According to Judd’s account, in December of 2017, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson confirmed suspicions Judd had long held about Weinstein’s treatment of her after Weinstein. she alleges, tricked her into attending what she thought was a business meeting in his private hotel suite. Judd claims that on that occasion, Weinstein tried to force her to massage him, pick out his clothes, and watch him shower. (She says she made a “mock bargain” with Weinstein so she could escape from the room before he raped her, telling him she would only let him touch her after she won an Academy Award for one of his movies.)
Jackson said he was considering both Judd and Mira Sorvino, another alleged victim of Weinstein’s, for roles in the LOTR franchise:
“I recall Miramax telling us they were a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs. This was probably in 1998… In hindsight, I realize that this was very likely the Miramax smear campaign in full swing. I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women – and as a direct result their names were removed from our casting list.”
Judd’s suit charges Weinstein with sexual harassment, defamation, and for violating California’s Unfair Competition law, which prohibits “unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business acts and practices.” As the New York Times reports, “unfair competition has not historically been applied to the area of sexual harassment and retaliation.”
Judd pledges to donate any financial recuperation from her lawsuit to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.
May 2, 2018
At the direction of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman begins an investigation into the past handling of criminal complaints against Weinstein by the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., and the New York City Police Department.
May 7, 2018
The New Yorker‘s Ronan Farrow and Jane Meyer report that four women accuse New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of physical abuse. His role in the potential prosecution of Weinstein is outlined in the piece, which also notes that Schneiderman is “New York State’s highest-ranking law-enforcement officer.”
Three hours after the story is published, Schneiderman resigns.
May 23, 2018
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan open a criminal probe into Weinstein’s alleged sex crimes. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York aims to determine whether Weinstein “lured or induced women to cross state lines for the purpose of committing a sex crime,” which would result in a federal charge.
May 25, 2018
Weinstein turns himself in at the First Police Precinct in Manhattan. He is arrested, charged with rape, and released on $1 million cash bail.
The AP reports that the New York sex crimes charges stem from Lucia Evans’ allegations; the rape charge is from an anonymous accuser who says she was raped by Weinstein in a hotel room.
June 5, 2018
Weinstein pleads not guilty to all six counts of rape and criminal sex acts with which he is charged in New York court.
June 26, 2018
As Buzzfeed would report later in the summer, on this date New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office sends Attorney General Barbara Underwood a letter calling for a six-month pause in the investigation into Vance’s handling of the Weinstein case “so that it would not hamper Vance’s prosecution of Weinstein on sexual assault charges stemming from allegations that came to light in 2017 in the New York Times and the New Yorker.”
According to Buzzfeed, “The attorney general’s office said the suspension of the investigation would have no effect on its ongoing civil rights lawsuit against Weinstein stemming from sexual misconduct allegations by employees of Weinstein’s company.”
July 17, 2018
Weinstein files a motion to dismiss Ashley Judd’s lawsuit in Los Angeles. He argues that, even if he called her “a nightmare to work with,” it would have had no tangible effect on her career, because it was just his opinion “and is therefore not defamatory.”
“Weinstein’s attorneys argue that his alleged conduct did not amount to sexual harassment, and that Judd’s allegations are barred by the statute of limitations,” Variety reports.
Weinstein’s attorneys also insist that Judd’s experience with Weinstein wasn’t “severe or pervasive” enough to constitute sexual harassment, because the “alleged unwanted sexual advances occurred on a single day.” In addition, Weinstein’s efforts to keep up his end of the “bargain” by attempting to get Judd cast in Oscar-caliber roles prove that Weinstein did not try to derail her acting career.
August 13, 2018
A New York judge rules that Weinstein can be sued under sex trafficking laws.
In allowing Kadian Noble’s lawsuit to proceed, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet says that the use of the “casting couch,” the entertainment industry euphemism for coercing sexual favors from aspiring actresses in exchange for film or TV roles, could be considered a “commercial sex act.”
Weinstein’s lawyers argued that “nothing of value was exchanged” between Noble and Weinstein during their encounter. But Sweet rejected that notion, writing that, “for an aspiring actress, meeting a world-renowned film producer carries value, in and of itself.” Even if the meeting alone weren’t enough, he says, Noble’s “reasonable expectation” of receiving job opportunities from Weinstein in the future, “based on Harvey’s repeated representations that she would, is sufficient.” He goes on:
“The opportunity, moreover, for the actress to sit down with that producer in a private meeting to review her film reel and discuss a promised film role carries value that is career-making and life-changing.
The contention, therefore, that Noble was given nothing of value — that the expectation of a film role, of a modeling meeting, of ‘his people’ being ‘in touch with her’ had no value — does not reflect modern reality.”
Weinstein’s lawyer, Phyllis Kupferstein, says Weinstein will appeal the decision, while Noble’s attorneys call Sweet’s ruling “groundbreaking for the #MeToo movement.”
August 22, 2018
Actress Emma Loman files a lawsuit in Los Angeles against Weinstein, alleging that he raped her at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.
As the Guardian reports, Loman says she first met Weinstein in 2004 at the Venice film festival, after which he invited her to be his guest at Cannes to “discuss her career.”
Loman said she was initially hesitant to accept the invitation but Weinstein was persistent, with his assistant calling her up to 30 times a day.
Loman said she finally relented and found Weinstein to be very professional during several meetings. The lawsuit says that changed, however, after he lured her to his hotel suite, presumably to discuss possible acting roles in some of his films. “Upon arriving at Weinstein’s suite … Weinstein quickly dropped his professional demeanor. He instead overpowered Loman and raped her,” the lawsuit says.
It adds that the 66-year-old former Hollywood producer subsequently made it clear to Loman that he could ruin her career if she came forward.
She is suing Weinstein for assault, violation of human trafficking laws, battery, and false imprisonment.
August 29, 2018
Weinstein files another motion to dismiss Ashley Judd’s lawsuit, arguing that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson said it was the studio “Miramax, not Weinstein” that told him to “steer clear” of Judd.
As ThinkProgress reports, this could only be true if Weinstein had no control over Miramax:
Miramax, the production company that he founded, along with his brother, and over which Harvey Weinstein reigned for decades. Even after Miramax was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 1993, the Weinsteins maintained a degree of creative and financial autonomy that was all but unheard of in the house of Mickey Mouse.
As if anyone at Miramax could possibly have done anything at all, let alone anything as significant as blacklist an A-list actress, without the explicit direction or approval of Harvey himself.
Capital & Main reports that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered his attorney general’s office to halt its probe into the alleged mishandling of the Weinstein case just six days after David Boies’ law firm donated $25,000 to Cuomo’s reelection campaign. “In all, Boies and his law firm have given Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaigns more than $245,000 since 2009.”
Boies was Weinstein’s defense attorney who, as the New Yorker reported, hired Black Cube investigators to spy on women Weinstein believed would accuse him of sexual violence and to quash the publication of stories about Weinstein’s misconduct.
Buzzfeed had previously reported that Cuomo called for a “six-month pause” in the Weinstein investigation so as not to interfere with Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance’s prosecution of Weinstein.
September 10, 2018
A federal judge rules that Ashley Judd’s lawsuit against Weinstein can proceed. As Variety reports:
[Judge Philip S.] Gutierrez held that Judd’s retaliation claims — defamation, interference with economic advantage, and unfair business practices — are sufficient to proceed.
“If Defendant indeed had no previous professional interactions — i.e. no previous ‘experiences’ — with Plaintiff, his statement that he had ‘bad experiences’ with her would be a provable fabrication,” the judge held.
Gutierrez also dismissed the statute of limitations objections, finding it plausible that Judd did not know she had been blacklisted until the Jackson interview was published.
However, Gutierrez dismisses Judd’s sexual harassment claim against Weinstein, “finding that it would be unprecedented to apply the statute to a prospective employer.”
The case will move forward to discovery, which will include the deposition of Weinstein.
September 13, 2018
A federal judge in New York court dismisses a racketeering lawsuit brought by six of Weinstein’s alleged harassment victims, saying the claims were too vague. (This is the lawsuit filed on Dec. 6, 2017, against “the Weinstein sexual enterprise.”)
The plaintiffs can file an amended complaint by October 31.
According to Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein “pushed back” on the arguments from Weinstein’s attorneys that their client wasn’t engaging in commercial sex trafficking.
“We all know what was going on,” Hellerstein said. “He was not attractive in such a way that Paul Newman was attractive. He wanted sex.”
September 17, 2018
London’s Metropolitan Police investigate a new allegation of sexual assault against Weinstein. This is the eleventh case in Britain against Weinstein. Variety reports that The new complaint, which concerns an assault in an unknown location in the early 1990s, was filed on August 16.
The Yard also confirmed earlier reports that its officers had visited the U.S. as part of what it refers to as Operation Kaguyak. “Officers involved in this investigation traveled to the United States in June as part of their inquiries,” the Yard said. “We are not prepared to discuss further.”
A total of 11 women have complained to London police of 16 separate alleged sexual assaults by Weinstein, from the early 1980s through to 2015.
October 11, 2018
One of the six criminal charges against Weinstein is dismissed by a New York judge. As the New York Times reports, “prosecutors acknowledged that the lead detective in the case had committed a serious error: He had failed to tell them about a witness who cast doubt on one of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers.”
Manhattan district attorney’s office prosecutors disclosed that a friend of Lucia Evans had told them back in August that Evans described the incident (she alleges Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him) differently. The unidentified friend told prosecutors that Evans said she’d performed the act willingly, as a trade for a promised “acting job.”
This friend said she gave this information to the lead detective in February — three months before Weinstein was indicted. As the Times reports, “According to the prosecutors’ letter, the detective, Nicholas DiGaudio, ‘failed to inform’ the district attorney’s office of “important details” of the interview. In addition, he explained to the friend that she had no obligation to cooperate with prosecutors, telling her ‘less is more.’”
Justice James Burke threw out the count. Weinstein still faces five other charges stemming from assaults of two other women, in 2006 and 2013. “The remaining charges include two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.”
November 13, 2018
Paz de la Huerta files a lawsuit against Weinstein in Los Angeles Superior Court.
She has already accused Weinstein of raping her on two occasions in New York City in 2010. Her never-before reported sexual-assault allegation concerns an assault at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on January 5, 2011.
Her lawsuit claims “Weinstein opened the door, wearing an opened bathrobe thereby prominently exposing his penis to Plaintiff in a taunting manner.” She “also observed another woman undressed in the room and was then invited by Weinstein to participate in a three party sexual encounter.”
She went to his room, her lawsuit explains, “in hopes of accomplishing her intention of warning and confronting Weinstein to stop the harassing phone calls, which he had that day resumed, and any further uninvited visits to her building.”
In addition to Weinstein, de la Huerta’s lawsuit also names The Weinstein Company, Four Seasons Hotels Ltd, Burton Way Hotels Ltd, and Burton Way Hotels LLC.
January 10, 2019
A federal judge in California dismisses Ashley Judd’s sexual harassment claim against Weinstein, but permits Judd’s claim that Weinstein tried to ruin her career after she rejected Weinstein’s advances.
As NPR reported, “U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez granted a motion from Weinstein’s defense team to dismiss the harassment portion of Judd’s lawsuit, agreeing that at the time of the alleged offense, the law cited in the suit did not cover producers such as Weinstein.”
Gutierrez took pains to say he “is not determining whether Plaintiff was sexually harassed in the colloquial sense of the term,” but only whether the incident fell under the scope of the statute her lawsuit cited
Judge Gutierrez dismissed this harassment portion of the suit once before, back in September 2018. Judd filed to have the claim restored the following month “after California’s Legislature amended the state’s harassment law to specifically include directors and producers.” She argued that the amendment should apply to her case retroactively but the judge ruled the change was a modification, not a clarification, and therefore could not be applied to Judd’s case.