Danny Elfman Loses Bid to End Defamation Lawsuit from Sexual Harassment Accuser
A California judge has rejected Danny Elfman’s attempt to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against him by Nomi Abadi, the Los Angeles composer who alleges Elfman exposed himself and sexually harassed her in 2016 before entering into a settlement and nondisclosure agreement with her a year later.
In a Christmas Eve ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gail Killefer found that Abadi can proceed with her lawsuit that claims Elfman “peddled appalling lies” and damaged her reputation when he disparaged her in lengthy statement to Rolling Stone for a July 2023 article titled “Danny Elfman Settled a Sexual-Harassment Allegation for $830,000.” In the article, Elfman categorically denied Abadi’s misconduct allegations, calling them “vicious and wholly false.”
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It was the “wholly false” line that Judge Killefer highlighted in her ruling. She said at least “some” of Abadi’s allegations appeared to have “minimal merit.” The judge wrote that text messages exist in which Elfman shared “nude photographs of his body” with Abadi, and that once, when Abadi was on her way to see Elfman, he texted her, “Maybe I’ll even be good and put some clothes on . . . A rarity around here.”
“Moreover, Elfman’s admission that he engaged in ‘naked romping’ with plaintiff in Paris permits the finding that defendant Elfman’s outright denial of all of plaintiff’s claims was knowingly false,” the judge wrote. “While defendant Elfman and plaintiff disagree as to the nature of their ‘relationship/friendship,’ plaintiff’s evidence supports a finding that her claims about sexual misconduct are not ‘wholly false’ and have minimal merit.”
The judge said claims with at least minimal merit may proceed in cases like this one. “Plaintiff’s texts with Elfman establish a probability that plaintiff can produce clear and convincing evidence that Elfman knowingly made a false statement by categorizing all of plaintiff’s sexual misconduct allegations as ‘wholly false,’” the judge wrote, summing up her ruling.
In his original statement to Rolling Stone in 2023, Elfman included a section describing his view of their relationship, claiming the statement was his opinion and not a fact. “Ms. Abadi’s allegations are simply not true. I allowed someone to get close to me without knowing that I was her ‘childhood crush’ and that her intention was to break up my marriage and replace my wife. When this person realized that I wanted distance from her, she made it clear that I would pay for having rejected her,” he said.
The judge said that section caught her eye as well. “The court finds that such a statement constitutes a provable false assertion of fact and not a mere opinion about plaintiff’s relationship with Elfman,” the judge wrote.
Elsewhere in her opinion, the judge shot down Elfman’s argument that his statement should be covered by litigation privilege because it was contained in a letter to Rolling Stone that Elfman characterized as a warning the publication might be sued. The judge said that the letter did qualify as a protected “demand letter” and was actually more of a “press release” because it expressly consented to Rolling Stone publishing Elfman’s allegedly defamatory statement.
“To allow defendant Elfman to make statements and permit their publication while hiding behind the litigation privilege would decimate the purpose of the privilege,” the judge wrote.
Elfman’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, said Monday that her client plans to appeal. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling and are optimistic that the Court of Appeal will agree with us that this case ought to be dismissed,” Vasquez wrote in an email sent to Rolling Stone.
Abadi filed her defamation lawsuit on July 10, 2024. She says Elfman, the former Oingo Boingo singer who wrote the Grammy-winning score for Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 and went on to write music for more than a dozen other Burton movies and many others, harmed her reputation and career aspirations when he branded her a liar.
Vasquez, the lawyer who represented Johnny Depp in his successful defamation battle against Amber Heard, also tried to convince the court that Abadi filed her lawsuit too late, missing the one-year statute of limitations on her claim. But the judge said the clock started ticking once Rolling Stone published its article on July 19, 2023, not when Elfman sent his response letter to Rolling Stone.
Abadi’s lawyer, Eric George, did not respond to a request for comment sent Monday. George previously worked with Heard early in her battle with Depp.
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