The same accuser who helped bring about Harvey Weinstein’s criminal conviction for a 2013 sexual assault at a Beverly Hills hotel has dropped her civil suit against the disgraced producer, but her attorney’s court filing left the door open for a possible revival of the case.
The plaintiff was identified as Jane Doe No. 1 in the Santa Monica Superior Court lawsuit filed in February 2023, alleging sexual battery, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. On Jan. 14, the plaintiff’s lawyer filed court papers with Judge Elaine W. Mandel asking that his client’s case be dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning it can be refiled later.
In December, the judge, noting the age (72) and health of the producer, granted his attorneys’ motion for an expedited trial and scheduled it for March 24.
“Defendant’s health is such that preference is necessary to prevent prejudice,” the judge’s clerk wrote in a minute order.
Weinstein is currently imprisoned in New York, which his lawyers noted in their argument in favor of moving up the trial date.
In December 2022, Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles Superior Court of three of the seven criminal counts he was facing — forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object — all of which related to Doe. The attack occurred on or about Feb. 18, 2013, in a Beverly Hills hotel room.
Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison in February 2023.
According to Doe’s suit, she attended a film festival and alleges that Weinstein came to her hotel room unexpectedly after she attended events that day.
“After he was done raping her, he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and left,” the plaintiff’s court papers allege.
Doe did not report the attack until 2017, when she had a talk with her daughter, during a time when Weinstein was at the forefront of the #metoo movement, according to her attorneys’ court papers.
Weinstein, who is appealing his Los Angeles case conviction, underwent emergency heart surgery in New York in September. New York prosecutors want to retry him for alleged sex crimes. Weinstein had been convicted in that state and sentenced to 23 year in prison, but the case was overturned by an appeals court.