A look at past and future cases Harvey Weinstein has faced as his New York conviction is thrown out
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harvey Weinstein’s landmark New York sexual assault conviction was thrown out by an appeals court Thursday, and most of the dozens of civil cases filed against him since he became a central target in the #MeToo movement in 2017 have either been settled or dismissed.
That doesn’t mean the 72-year-old disgraced movie mogul and his lawyers don’t have plenty of court time ahead. Prosecutors in Manhattan say they plan to retry him, and several other cases remain unresolved.
Here’s a look at those, and at some that have come and gone:
THE LONE LOS ANGELES CONVICTION
Weinstein was found guilty in 2022 in Los Angeles of the rape and sexual assault of Italian actor and model Evgeniya Chernyshova, and his 16-year sentence in that case will keep him in prison despite the reversal of the New York verdict.
Of the four women he was charged with assaulting in California, this was the only case that led to a conviction. Weinstein insisted at his sentencing that he never met her.
An appeal looms there too, and Weinstein’s attorneys will make the same arguments as in the New York case about witnesses testifying to assaults he was not charged with.
Los Angeles prosecutors said Thursday that the judge at their trial acted well within state law in the testimony she allowed. Weinstein’s lawyers must make their case in a filing by May 20.
Weinstein could be brought to California to serve the sentence in that case, or he could remain behind bars in New York while awaiting retrial.
WOMAN AT THE CENTER OF CALIFORNIA CONVICTION SUES
Chernyshova also is the plaintiff in one of the last remaining civil lawsuits against Weinstein. Just weeks after the guilty verdict, she sued over emotional distress from her 2013 rape at a Beverly Hills hotel.
Weinstein’s attorneys argued at his sentencing in the criminal case that the lawsuit constituted proof that she lied on the stand when she said she sought no financial gain from coming forward with her allegations.
The civil case remains in its early stages. At a hearing Thursday, just a few hours after the New York decision was revealed, a judge tentatively granted Chernyshova’s request that it be put on hold while the California criminal appeal plays out.
JULIA ORMOND BRINGS A BELATED LAWSUIT
Like other actors including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, Julia Ormond, briefly a major star in the 1990s, has alleged in a lawsuit that Weinstein railroaded her career.
Ormond, who appeared opposite Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall” and Harrison Ford in “Sabrina,” filed her suit in New York last October. In it she accused Weinstein of committing sexual battery against her in 1995 and then working to tarnish her reputation in Hollywood.
The newest of the known lawsuits against Weinstein, it came years after most of the others. Ormond took advantage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed a temporary window for people who allege sexual assault to file past the state’s normal deadlines.
Weinstein’s lawyers denied her allegations.
JUDD’S SUIT LIES DORMANT
Judd, who became a hugely important figure in the takedown of Weinstein and larger #MeToo movement when she went on the record in the original New York Times story about his sexual misconduct, sued him in 2018. Like Ormond she alleged Weinstein did major damage to her career by smearing her to other filmmakers in retaliation for rejecting his sexual advances.
Her lawsuit, which came after director Peter Jackson said Weinstein told him 20 years earlier that Judd was a “nightmare” to work with when Jackson was considering her for a major role in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, accused Weinstein of defamation, sexual harassment and violating California’s unfair competition labor law.
A federal judge in 2019 threw out the sexual harassment claim, saying Weinstein and Judd, as a producer and actor discussing prospective projects, didn’t have the kind of employment relationship that the law covers. California lawmakers later expanded the statute to explicitly cover producers and directors.
Judd’s lawsuit is now on long-term hold. A judge administratively closed it last year, but it can be reopened at any time if her legal team makes a motion.
MCGOWAN’S SUIT IS AMONG THE DISMISSED
Some suits were thrown out, including one from actor Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s earliest and most prominent accusers. She alleged he engaged in racketeering when he worked to silence her and harm her career before she publicly accused him of rape, which he has denied.
McGowan served as her own attorney in the case after firing her lawyers. In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
THE BIG SETTLEMENT
The vast majority of lawsuits against Weinstein, by women from office assistants to successful actors, were brought to a close through a settlement in 2021 as part of the bankruptcy of his former film company, The Weinstein Co.
The agreement included a victims’ fund of about $17 million for some 40 women who sued him. The amount was approved by a majority, but lawyers for some of them, including actor Dominique Huett, objected to it, calling the individual shares “pathetically meager” for the damage Weinstein did.
Also part of the settlement was former actor and screenwriter Louisette Geiss, the lead plaintiff in a Manhattan class action suit. She sued Weinstein in 2017, accusing him of attempting to force her to watch him masturbate in a hotel bathroom in 2008.
“In the end, you see that the judicial system is still not in the right place to take him down. It’s really society that takes him down,” she told The Associated Press the year after the settlement.
The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as all of the women named here have done.
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