Danny Elfman is seeking a judge’s permission to file a countersuit for fraudulent concealment against a pianist who is currently suing the famed composer for defamation.
Nomi Abadi’s Los Angeles Superior Court complaint against the 71-year-old Elfman pertains to remarks he made during a July 2023 Rolling Stone interview. Elfman’s denials of Abadi’s allegations of repeated sexual harassment and misconduct were included in an investigative piece about an $800,000 settlement he made with his former mentee.
In court papers filed Thursday with Judge Gail Killefer in advance of a June 4 hearing, Elfman’s attorney, Camille Vasquez, alleges that Abadi was involved in “soliciting and facilitating” the interview.
“Mr. Elfman has long suspected, based on circumstantial evidence, that Ms. Abadi was intimately involved in the publication of the Rolling Stone article,” Vasquez writes, adding that her investigation “uncovered and sufficiently vetted direct, competent evidence confirming this suspicion.”
The countersuit will allege that Abadi “actually procured the publication of the Rolling Stone article in violation her contractual obligations and fraudulently concealed her involvement in (order to) induce Mr. Elfman to pay her the remaining installment payments due under the (settlement) agreement,” Vasquez further writes.
According to the proposed countersuit — which would seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages — in the months leading up Elfman’s final settlement installment payment to Abadi, she began working with a reporter to “develop and ultimately publish an article detailing her false allegations against Mr. Elfman, which would run in Rolling Stone once she had collected all of her ill-gotten gains from Mr. Elfman.”
In her court papers, Vasquez says the intermittent friendship between Elfman and Abadi had ended in political disagreements. Vasquez was Johnny Depp’s lawyer in his dueling litigation with former spouse Amber Heard.
Discovery in Abadi’s suit, filed last July 10, is on hold while Elfman appeals Killefer’s December ruling denying his motion to dismiss the pianist’s case on free-speech grounds. In court papers previously filed, Abadi states in a sworn declaration that her career is in flux.
“My five years of hard work building a career in film composing has been destroyed as a result of Mr. Elfman’s blatantly false statements about me in the Rolling Stone article,” Abadi says. “His actions have forced me to abandon my dreams of film scoring to pursue other opportunities.”
Abadi, who contends Elfman had a fetish about nudity that included driving without clothing, says she suffers from severe emotional distress.
“I have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and the humiliation, stress and fear for my personal safety have compounded these feelings, which collectively have had a profoundly negative impact on my personal life,” Abadi further contends.
Abadi’s application to the Association of Women Film Composers mentorship program was denied with no explanation after the publication of the magazine article, according to the plaintiff, who further maintains that exclusion from the program resulted in the loss for her of more composing opportunities.