A new lawsuit has been added to Harvey Weinstein's long list of judicial proceedings. British actress Julia Ormond filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court on Wednesday against the former producer for sexual assault. She is also suing The Walt Disney Corporation, as well as Miramax, for negligent supervision and retention. The representative agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is also included in the lawsuit for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
The news was revealed exclusively by Variety. The magazine obtained access to the lawsuit and revealed that Ormond said she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in 1995 after a business dinner. In addition, the lawsuit states that both the representatives of CAA and those of Miramax and Disney knew of Weinstein's behavior and "did nothing to protect her":
The men at CAA who represented Ormond knew about Weinstein. So too did Weinstein’s employers at Miramax and Disney. Brazenly, none of these prominent companies warned Ormond that Weinstein had a history of assaulting women because he was too important, too powerful, and made them too much money.
CAA and Weinstein deny the accusations
Neither Disney nor Miramax responded to Ormond's accusations. A CAA spokesperson did and told Variety that the lawsuit filed by the British actress is "without merit":
CAA takes all allegations of sexual assault and abuse seriously and has compassion for Ms. Ormond and the experience she described in her complaint. However, the claims that Ms. Ormond has levied against the agency are completely without merit. Through counsel, Ms. Ormond approached CAA in March with these allegations about the agency. Knowing these allegations to be untrue, the agency then retained attorney Loretta Lynch and her law firm, Paul Weiss, to defend the company. Their review found nothing to support Ms. Ormond’s claims against CAA.
Harvey Weinstein also denied the allegations. In statements to NBC, one of his lawyers, Imran H. Ansari, assured that the former producer "is prepared to vehemently defend himself" against this new lawsuit:
Harvey Weinstein categorically denies the allegations made against him by Julia Ormond and he is prepared to vehemently defend himself. This is yet another example of a complaint filed against Mr. Weinstein after the passing of decades, and he is confident that the evidence will not support Ms. Ormond’s claims.
Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York prison after being convicted of sexual assault. His sentence was extended last February in Los Angeles when another 16 years in prison were added for another sexual assault case.
Julia Ormond says Weinstein couldn't have done this without enablers
The star of Sabrina and Legends of Passion decided to speak out almost twenty years later and is covered by the Adult Survivors Act that Governor Kathy Hochul passed in May 2022 after seeing how other women called out the former producer, as she explained in statements collected by NBC:
After living for decades with the painful memories of my experiences at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, I am humbled and grateful to all those who have risked speaking out.
However, Ormond has taken matters one step further and is also suing those who, according to her, were also responsible for allowing Harvey Weinstein to continue his behavior, acting as "enablers" since, she explained to Variety, they must also, just as that Weinstein, pay for what they did:
Obviously, Harvey Weinstein is in jail and is going to be in jail for a very long time,” she added. “I personally don’t believe that Harvey could have done this without enablers. And for me, that is the layer that you have to get down to, in terms of the root cause. If you think about it, If there had been best practices and Harvey Weinstein had been called out at the start after his first sexual harassment or his first sexual assault, he could have learned different behaviors, and potentially all of the people that followed wouldn’t have been harmed. But he wasn’t. And there’s a reason for that.
