Ashley Judd Slams Harvey Weinstein’s ‘Baseless’ Appeal to Dismiss Her Lawsuit
A representative for actress Ashley Judd, one of Harvey Weinstein’s first public accusers, has released a court filing in response to Weinstein’s recent attempt to dismiss her defamation lawsuit against him, calling the plea a “baseless and offensive study in misdirection.”
“Harvey Weinstein’s motion to dismiss is a baseless and offensive study in misdirection that demonstrates his malicious and reckless disregard for the law and for Ms. Judd’s rights to be free from sexual harassment and retaliation,” said Gibson Dunn litigator Ted Boutrous on Judd’s behalf. “It ignores and misstates key allegations in the complaint, impermissibly cites (contradictory) extrinsic evidence, and relies heavily on cases interpreting a statute that has nothing to do with this case. Weinstein also makes the bizarre argument that he purportedly sought to advance Ms. Judd’s career as part of a ‘deal’ for sex that Weinstein presents as real — rather than the decidedly ‘mock bargain’ Ms. Judd alleges she made in her complaint. He even claims that Ms. Judd was no ‘ingénue in the film business when she went to Weinstein’s hotel room,’ saying that she was ‘well-versed in the entertainment industry’ and suggesting that she should have known that a purported business meeting with Weinstein really was a ‘casting couch’ invitation. To state the obvious: conditioning career advancement on sex is textbook harassment.”
Judd filed suit in April, accusing Weinstein of retaliating against her after she refused his sexual advances. Judd is accusing Weinstein of smearing her reputation to director Peter Jackson, preventing him from casting her in “The Lord of the Rings.”
In July, Weinstein appealed to the court to dismiss Judd’s lawsuit against him, which alleges that Weinstein intentionally harmed her acting career after she rejected his sexual advances in a hotel room.
Last week, Weinstein’s attorneys also filed a motion to dismiss his July sex crimes indictment, which found him guilty of one additional count of criminal sexual act in the first degree, and two counts of predatory sexual assault. The motion cited email exchanges between Weinstein and one of his alleged rape victims, which were not included in the initial trial process.
More to come.
