The good news for superstar “hot yoga” teacher Bikram Choudhury Thursday is that he has settled a sexual assault civil case brought by a yoga instructor against him.
The bad news is he’s still subject to arrest in connection with another civil lawsuit by a separate instructor because a judge issued a warrant after Choudhury ignored a court order to produce assets after a $6.47 million jury verdict went against him. In that case, a legal advisor successfully said Choudhury wrongly punished her for speaking out against harassment of women in the workplace.
But in Thursday’s announcement by lawyers for both sides in court, the other instructor and Choudhury apparently settled the instructor’s lawsuit alleging Choudhury sexually assaulted her and blackballed her yoga business.
“It was the toughest case we had around here for a while,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Doyle said upon hearing of the accord reached between plaintiff Larissa Anderson and Choudhury.
Choudhury’s attorney, Linda Hurevitz, told Doyle said all of the paperwork is nearly completed cementing the resolution of the case. No terms were divulged.
Doyle set a status conference for Aug. 22.
The case was scheduled to go to trial June 12.
Choudhury gained fame for his “hot yoga” in which participants participated in rooms heated to more than 100 degrees. He personally was featured on billboards advertising his enterprise.
Anderson sued Choudhury and Bikram’s Yoga College of India in August 2013. The suit alleged she was sexually assaulted by Choudhury in October 2011.
After Anderson rejected a later sexual advance by Choudhury, he refused to promote her studio and she was later blacklisted from the Bikram Yoga community, her suit alleged.
“At the time of the sexual assault, Bikram Choudhury had already personally approved the studio down to the floor plan and knew that Larissa Anderson had begun negotiating a lease, retained a contractor and (took) out thousands of dollars in debt to open the studio,” the suit stated.
Attorneys for Choudhury stated in their court papers that the evidence undermined Anderson’s claims of sexual assault.
“Simply put, there are significant inconsistencies and implausibilities about Anderson’s claim that Bikram assaulted her in 2011,” Choudhury’s lawyers stated in their court papers.
However, in the other separate case, Choudhury is currently the subject of an arrest warrant issued by Judge Edward Moreton on May 24 for allegedly ignoring court orders to produce assets to the plaintiff in another case in satisfaction of a $6.47 million jury verdict reached in January 2016.
–City News Service