Harvey Weinstein Fails To Get Class Action Tossed; Bob Weinstein, Disney, TWC Board & David Glasser Dropped From Case
After decades of being joined at the big-screen hip, Harvey Weinstein and his brother and longtime business partner Bob Weinstein split in late 2017 as accusations of sexual assault and harassment piled up against Harvey Weinstein.
However, the brothers were still linked in the courts. But that state of affairs for the Weinsteins, as well as several executives at their now-shuttered company and Disney, changed today.
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In a ruing (read it here) on Harvey Weinstein’s unsuccessful attempt to have a nearly year and a half sex-trafficking class action suit dismissed, a federal judge in New York cut Bob Weinstein loose today. The TWC board, ex-The Weinstein Company COO David Glasser and former HR VP Frank Gil, Disney and several others were also released permanently from the sprawling case.
After the sexual misconduct scandal broke, TWC terminated Harvey Weinstein on October 8, 2017, and, still owning 23% of the company, he formally resigned October 17. The assets of TWC have since been sold off after it went into bankruptcy last year.
“We are gratified that Judge [Alvin K] Hellerstein, like other federal judges before him, has dismissed the claims against Bob Weinstein,” attorney Gary Stein told Deadline today, noting previous suits over the past almost two years that have seen his client dropped as a defendant.
“As we’ve maintained, Bob had no knowledge that Harvey was sexually assaulting women prior to the media reports in late 2017 detailing Harvey’s alleged misconduct,” the Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP partner said. “Given that Bob had no knowledge of that misconduct, there is no reasonable basis to hold him liable for the unconscionable conduct of which Harvey has been accused.”
With a hearing in Harvey Weinstein’s criminal case coming next week and a trial that could see him behind bars for life if found guilty, the Pulp Fiction EP did see some of the allegations against him sliced off the class action. Yet, Harvey Weinstein is far from completely slithering away from the suit from 10 women: The Oscar-winning producer is still looking at a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act claim.
An August 2018 first amended complaint arose out of the action initially filed by Melissa Thompson, Larissa Gomes and Caitlin Dulan in late December 2017, which claims RICO Act violations. Last summer, a federal judge put that case together with another civil action against Weinstein from Louisette Geiss, Zoe Brock, Sarah Ann Thomas, Katherine Kendall, Melissa Sagemiller and Nannette Klatt.
Along with being accused by Ashley Judd in a now temporarily halted case, Weinstein is also facing allegations from more than 60 other women that he sexually assaulted or sexually harassed them. In that vein, Weinstein is under investigation by federal prosecutors as well as probes by the Manhattan D.A.’s office and the NYPD.
Additional allegations against Weinstein have been reviewed by the LAPD, which sent an initial trio of cases to the L.A. County D.A. in February last year. Another case was handed over to that same office in in August. As UK police continue their investigation, the Beverly Hills Police in January 2018 passed two cases of sexual assault its says occurred in their jurisdiction to Lacey’s office.
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