Danny Elfman has dropped his countersuit for fraudulent concealment against a pianist who is herself suing the famed composer for defamation.
In pleadings filed Tuesday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William E. Weinberger, Elfman’s attorney, Camille M. Vasquez, asked that the 72-year-old Elfman’s amended countersuit filed June 6 be dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning it can be refiled later. The court papers do not explain Elfman’s request.
In their earlier court papers seeking dismissal of Elfman’s fraud claim, Abaid’s attorneys called it “nothing more than an improper attempt to elevate a claim for breach of contract…”
“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 Abadi lawyers’ court papers stated.
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.
Vasquez, who also has represented Johnny Depp, alleged in the countersuit 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 wrote while adding that her investigation “uncovered and sufficiently vetted direct, competent evidence confirming this suspicion.”
The countersuit additionally alleged 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.”
Elfman also contended that in the months leading up to his 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.”
Discovery in Abadi’s suit, filed in July 2024, is on hold while Elfman appeals Judge Gail Killefer’s December decision to deny his motion to dismiss the pianist’s case on free-speech grounds. Killefer has since retired.
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.”