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, the plaintiff is seeking pretrial discovery of the musician’s financial condition.
In court papers filed Tuesday 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.
“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 a later-term abortion, forced her to have public sex and coerced her mother to turn over guardianship,” the plaintiff’s attorneys further contend in their court papers.
Requests for a defendant’s financial condition typically are not made until after a jury has made a formal finding that a plaintiff is entitled to punitive damages.
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.
In their motion to dismiss what remains of Tyler’s accuser’s case, 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.
In her suit filed in December 2022, Tyler’s accuser alleges that he convinced the plaintiff’s mother to grant him guardianship over her when she was 16 years old, allowing her to live with him and engage in a sexual relationship. Being a Catholic, she maintains that Tyler was the one who pressured her into having an abortion.
The plaintiff subsequently “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, which additionally states that she went on to have a family and become active in her faith.