As Steven Tyler awaits a judge’s ruling on his bid to dismiss the remaining claims in a lawsuit brought by a woman who alleges the Aerosmith frontman had an illicit relationship with her when she was 16-years-old and he was 25, he also is challenging the plaintiff’s attempt to obtain pretrial discovery of the musician’s financial condition.
In court papers previously filed with Inglewood Superior Court Judge Tamara Hall in advance of an Aug. 20 hearing, the 67-year-old woman’s attorneys maintain that it is “very likely” Tyler, 77, will be found liable to the plaintiff by a jury for punitive damages by a finding he engaged in malice, oppression of fraud.
“He engaged in a continuous course of criminal conduct for multiple years that included sex, drugs and lies with a child under his custody which spanned from Oregon to Washington, Washington to Massachusetts, Massachusetts to California and many other states in between,” the plaintiff’s lawyers state in their pleadings.
Tyler also moved the woman “across the country from her family, had sex with her, provided her cocaine, provided her heroin, impregnated her, coerced her into an abortion later in pregnancy, forced her to have public sex and coerced her mother to turn over guardianship,” the plaintiff’s attorneys further contend in their court papers.
But in court papers filed Thursday in response to the woman’s motion, Tyler’s attorneys say the evidence undermines her claims.
“The record is replete with facts that contradict plaintiff’s claims, including that plaintiff was already using cocaine prior to meeting Tyler, (that) Tyler did not prevent plaintiff from attending school or receiving medical care and that plaintiff made the decision to have an abortion while Tyler was out of town and by the time he returned, plaintiff had already gone through with the procedure,” Tyler’s lawyers counter in their pleadings.
The plaintiff’s attorneys’ court papers also include portions of her deposition testimony offered in support of her motion. In the transcript, she touches on multiple subjects, including her recollection that Tyler allegedly told her that using cocaine was safe.
“That’s what he told me,” the woman said. “He told me it wasn’t heroin. It was a safe stimulant, like coffee.”
The woman further testified that she knew little about drugs in 1975 and wasn’t exposed to them until she met Tyler, who she further contends told her that cocaine would help her stay awake if she became sleepy. She also said that Tyler only once proffered her cocaine in a large quantity.
The plaintiff additionally testified that Tyler gave her heroin once, saying, “This is heroin. I want you to snort a little of this,” the woman said. When she resisted, Tyler pressured her to take the heroin and she finally relented and used a straw, she said.
“I did eventually take a little bit and lied down on the bed and felt (a) sense of despair come over me,” she further said. “It was a horrible feeling. It didn’t make me feel better I never took it again.”
Regarding Tyler’s establishment of a guardianship over her, the woman testified that the musician told her that her mother signed the appropriate papers.
When the plaintiff asked Tyler how he convinced her mother to give her formal consent to the guardianship, the singer told the plaintiff, “I told her I needed them for you to go to school and to get medical care and she signed them,” the woman testified.
The plaintiff “made a conscious decision to leave and escape the music and drug-addled world seeking to be free from the sexualized culture created by Tyler and the industry,” according to her suit filed in December 2022, which additionally states that she went on to have a family and become active in her faith.
But in their court papers, Tyler’s lawyers say there is no evidence of any guardianship.
“Additionally, although plaintiff claims that Tyler was her legal guardian, she testified that she never went through any guardianship proceeding with Tyler, she was never in a court and there was no hearing where Tyler was awarded guardianship over her, she never spoke to her mother about the alleged guardianship and she never saw papers appointing Tyler as her guardian,” according to Tyler’s attorneys’ pleadings.
In their motion to dismiss what remains of Tyler’s accuser’s case set for hearing Aug. 28, his attorneys maintain that only one of her claims have a California connection, while others allegedly occurred in Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington, where her causes of action would be time-barred.
The part of Tyler’s case previously dismissed by Judge Ronald Frank in an anti-SLAPP motion involved the woman’s intentional infliction of emotional distress claim that pertained to statements made in Tyler’s published memoirs. The state’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law is intended to prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate those who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
She’s just looking fir retirement money!!! What kind of mother would sign her 15 year old to a rock star really??!!