Danny Elfman’s countersuit for fraudulent concealment against a pianist who is suing the famed composer for defamation should be dismissed, the plaintiff’s lawyers state in new court papers.
In pleadings filed Friday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gail Killefer, plaintiff Nomi Abadi’s attorneys say the 72-year-old Elfman’s amended countersuit is just as problematic as his original complaint.
Elfman’s fraud claim is “nothing more than an improper attempt to elevate a claim for breach of contract…” according to Abadi’s lawyers’ court papers.
“The fraudulent concealment cause of action is still entirely based on Ms. Abadi’s alleged breaches of the parties’ July 2018 settlement agreement, therefore rendering Mr. Elfman’s (amended countersuit) deficiently pleaded due to his continued failure to properly plead that Ms. Abadi owed him an independent duty outside the agreement,” the court papers state.
Elfman filed an amended countersuit in November after Killefer ruled the previous month that the fraudulent concealment cause of action needed shoring up.
Abadi’s underlying complaint against 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 protégé.
In her court papers, 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 alleges that Abadi “actually procured the publication of the Rolling Stone article in violation of 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 countersuit — which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages — in the months leading up to 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.”
“Mr. Elfman brings this (countersuit) to correct the fraud Ms. Abadi has perpetrated,” the countersuit filed June 18 states.
Discovery in Abadi’s suit, filed in July 2024, is on hold while Elfman appeals Killefer’s December decision to deny 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 a flux and that her 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.”
She is certifiable.