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A sexual assault case against Bob Dylan has been dropped and cannot be brought to court again.
The allegation from a woman claims Dylan groomed and sexually abused her as a 12-year-old in 1965. But after losing her attorneys and facing a $50,000 sanctions bid for discovery violations and evidence spoliation, she decided to drop the case. The sexual assault case has been unraveling in court over the month of July, as reported by Law360.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla scolded the woman’s counsel for failing to turn over emails or text messages to the defense by discovery deadlines. The woman’s attorneys later asked to withdraw from the case. They explained that the defendant refused to hand over three boxes of documents that would ’embarrass’ her. Dylan’s counsel argued that the plaintiff deleted relevant emails, while others were lost.
Dylan’s counsel asked the judge to impose a $50,000 sanction to be paid by the plaintiff and her lawyers. The judge allowed the plaintiff to discuss her lawyers withdrawal in private and to determine if she’d like to retain new counsel. When they returned to the court room, her lawyers announced she would be withdrawing the complaint with prejudice.
The plaintiff initially filed the lawsuit in August 2021, just before the closing of a limited window under the New York Child Victims Act. The law allowed past victims of child sexual assault to bring claims against their abuser regardless of the time between the assault. She claimed Dylan assaulted her when he was 24 and she was 12 in 1965.
Dylan’s lawyers called the lawsuit ‘outrageous.’ “We are pleased that the plaintiff has dropped this lawyer-driven sham and that the case has been dismissed with prejudice,” Orin Snyder told Law360 about the case. Dylan was represented by Orin Snyder, Alexandra Perloff-Giles and Jeremy A. Bunting of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and Andrea Schillaci of Hurwitz & Fine PC.