The long-running lawsuit accusing Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s is headed for a new May 3 trial before its fifth judge, who vowed Monday to see the case through to the end.
At a hearing in downtown Los Angeles, the new judge also said he was prepared to reconsider any rulings made by his predecessor, Judge Patricia Young, who stepped aside in September with just two weeks to go before a prior trial date in the case. Young voluntarily recused herself after disclosing that she had discussed the case with another judge who had previously been disqualified from the case.
On Monday, the new judge, Lawrence Riff, said he would toss out and reconsider any of Young’s rulings “from the beginning of her assignment” if either side requested it. Lawyers for the plaintiff, Julia Misley, said they would challenge a key ruling from earlier this year that gutted her case. The ruling, known as a summary adjudication, dismissed Misley’s claims involving alleged misconduct in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington, leaving only those involving California.
“Both parties here are entitled to have the peace of mind at the end of the case that everything was on the up and up and proper, and that there’s no lingering shadow of doubt of possible impropriety,” Riff said, explaining that he would review the earlier rulings based on arguments already submitted to the court, without allowing either side to file new ones.
Riff acknowledged that the additional hearings would increase legal costs for both sides, but he expected to keep the trial date in the first half of next year, regardless. “There will be more hearings, to say the least, but I don’t think it’s going to unduly prolong the pretrial proceedings,” he said.
In her lawsuit filed in December 2022 and first reported by Rolling Stone, Misley claimed that Tyler sexually abused her for years beginning in 1973, when she was a high school sophomore, and he was 25. Tyler denied the claims spanning three years and four states as he asked the court to dismiss the entire lawsuit. Tyler and his lawyers argued that he lived with Misley in Boston for most of their relationship, where the age of consent was 16. He argued that Massachusetts law governed them even when he traveled with Misley, formerly Julia Holcomb, in other states.
After multiple hearings, Young rejected Misley’s claims of alleged misconduct in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington, saying they fell outside her authority or were filed too late. In asking Riff to reconsider those decisions, Misley’s lawyers are betting they can revive some of the dismissed claims without jeopardizing the rest of their case.
In Massachusetts, for example, Misley and her lawyers had argued that Tyler violated state law while living with Misley in Boston, despite the state’s age of consent being 16. They alleged he broke the law by giving her drugs before sex and by illegally inducing her into the sexual relationship while holding himself out as her legal guardian at the time. Misley said that reading Tyler’s memoir led her to a series of realizations about the trauma she had experienced, giving her grounds to sue despite the statute of limitations. Tyler countered that she had known about the alleged conduct all along and that the deadline to sue had therefore expired.
Before Riff’s ruling on Monday, Tyler’s lead lawyer, David Long-Daniels, argued that the court had no reason to revisit Young’s ruling tossing out the claims from the other three states. He said there was no evidence Young consulted the disqualified judge on that critical ruling. He said the record showed she only consulted the other judge more recently when she was weighing pre-trial rulings related to evidence that would be allowed at trial.
“Summary adjudication is really a clear issue: California has no right to try what is happening in Massachusetts, or in Oregon, or in Washington,” Long-Daniels said. “I don’t think there’s any evidence that she had consulted [the disqualified judge] on that.”
But Misley’s lawyers disagreed, saying there was ambiguity in Young’s statements. They said the only way to clear up the issue would be “an extraordinary fact-finding issue.” Riff said court rules prohibited him from discussing the matter with Young unless both sides were present, and he did not want to pursue that option.
Riff set the new trial for May 3 and gave both sides until Nov. 20 to request review of any of Young’s orders. Any request to void one of her orders would be granted, he said, and he would then take it up himself. He expects to hold a new hearing in January on the key ruling that gutted Misley’s case, he said.
Misley’s lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the California Child Victims Act, a 2019 law that temporarily revived otherwise expired claims by giving survivors of childhood sexual abuse a three-year window to sue. The lawsuit said Misley first met Tyler in Portland, Oregon, in 1973, a month after her 16th birthday. She said he had sex with her that night, and that they had sex again in Seattle, at the next stop on his concert tour. The age of consent in Oregon and Washington at the time was 18.
Misley alleges she was groomed into a three-year relationship, during which Tyler also brought her to California for an awards show and dragged her naked onto an elevator so he could have sex with her in a pool, she claimed.
In his 2011 memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, Tyler recalled the guardianship arrangement, noting their age difference. “I was so in love, I almost took a teen bride. I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights, and her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state,” he wrote.
Tyler recounted having sex with Misley on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston. He also described the incident that Misley says took place at the Beverly Hills hotel. He wrote that he and Misley were naked in the hotel elevator after having sex in a hot tub, and “when the doors opened, there was an Amish family staring at us like figures in an oil painting.”
In her series of recent pretrial rulings leading up to her recusal, Young said Misley could present evidence to the jury that Tyler “held himself out to be her guardian,” as well as testimony about how she viewed her circumstances at the time. But in a victory for Tyler, Young ruled that jurors could hear evidence Misley had “consented” to the relationship.
Young’s rulings about evidence allowed at trial will be stricken and reconsidered, Judge Riff said Monday.