LOS ANGELES — Harvey Weinstein’s landmark sex abuse conviction in New York was thrown out by an appeals court on Thursday, and most of the dozens of civil lawsuits filed against him since he became a central target in the #MeToo movement in 2017 have been dismissed. processed or rejected.
That doesn’t mean the 72-year-old disgraced movie mogul and his lawyers don’t have enough time in court. Prosecutors in Manhattan say they plan to try him again, and several other cases remain unsolved.
Here’s a look at those, and some that have come and gone:
Weinstein was found guilty in Los Angeles in 2022 of the rape and sexual assault of Italian actor and model Evgeniya Chernyshova, and his 16-year sentence will keep him in prison in that case despite the reversal of the verdict in New York.
Of the four women he assaulted in California, this was the only case that led to a conviction. At his sentencing, Weinstein insisted he had never met her.
An appeal is also looming there, and Weinstein’s lawyers will make the same arguments as in the New York case about witnesses who testified to assaults of which he was not accused.
Los Angeles prosecutors said Thursday that the judge at their trial acted well within state law in the testimony she allowed. Weinstein’s lawyers must file their case by May 20.
In that case, Weinstein could be taken to California to serve the sentence, or he could remain behind bars in New York pending a new trial.
Chernyshova is also the plaintiff in one of the last remaining civil lawsuits against Weinstein. Just weeks after the guilty verdict, she sued for emotional distress stemming from her 2013 rape at a Beverly Hills hotel.
Weinstein’s lawyers argued at his sentencing in the criminal case that the lawsuit was evidence that she lied on the stand when she said she was not seeking financial gain by going public with her allegations.
The civil case is still in its early stages. At a hearing Thursday, just a few hours after the decision was announced in New York, a judge provisionally granted Chernyshova’s request to stay the decision while the criminal appeal in California proceeds.
Like other actors including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, Julia Ormond, briefly a major star in the 1990s, has claimed in a lawsuit that Weinstein ruined her career.
Ormond, who appeared opposite Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall” and Harrison Ford in “Sabrina,” filed her suit in New York last October. In it, she accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 1995 and then working to tarnish her reputation in Hollywood.
The latest of the high-profile lawsuits against Weinstein came years after most of the others. Ormond took advantage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allowed a temporary period for people alleging sexual abuse to pass normal state deadlines.
Weinstein’s lawyers denied her allegations.
Judd, who became a hugely important figure in the takedown of Weinstein and the larger #MeToo movement when she came forward in the original New York Times story about his sexual misconduct, sued him in 2018. Like Ormond, she claimed that Weinstein had done great damage to her career by smearing her against other filmmakers in retaliation for rejecting his sexual advances.
Her lawsuit, which came after director Peter Jackson said Weinstein told him 20 years earlier that Judd was a “nightmare” to work with when Jackson was considering her for a major role in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, accused Weinstein of defamation, sexual harassment, and violating California’s unfair competition labor law.
A federal judge in 2019 dismissed the sexual harassment claim, saying that as a producer and actor discussing potential projects, Weinstein and Judd did not have the type of employment relationship covered by the law. California lawmakers later expanded the statute to include producers and directors.
Judd’s trial has now been postponed for the long term. A judge administratively closed it last year, but it could be reopened at any time if her legal team files a motion.
Some lawsuits were dismissed, including that of actor Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s first and most prominent accusers. She claimed he engaged in extortion when he tried to silence her and damage her career before she publicly accused him of rape, which he has denied.
McGowan acted as her own attorney in the case after firing her attorneys. In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
The vast majority of lawsuits against Weinstein, by women from office assistants to successful actors, were resolved through a settlement in 2021 as part of the bankruptcy of his former film company, The Weinstein Co.
The agreement included a victims fund of about $17 million for about 40 women who sued him. The amount was approved by a majority, but lawyers for some of them, including actor Dominique Huett, objected, calling the individual shares “pathetically meager” for the damage caused by Weinstein.
Former actor and screenwriter Louisette Geiss, the lead plaintiff in a Manhattan class-action lawsuit, was also part of the settlement. She sued Weinstein in 2017, accusing him of trying to force her to watch him masturbate in a hotel bathroom in 2008.
“Ultimately you see that the justice system is still not in the right place to take him down. It’s really society that’s putting him down,” she told The Associated Press the year after the settlement.
The AP generally does not name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as all the women mentioned here have done.
