“The actress landed a stunning payout after alleging she was sexually assaulted. It appears to pave the way for a host of legal actions against Disney.”, — write: www.dailymail.co.uk
Documents lodged with a court in New York reveal that the Walt Disney Co – which at the time owned Weinstein’s company Miramax – has paid her $5.75 million in an out-of-court settlement.
That deal was struck earlier this year after she accused them of ‘negligent supervision and retention’, meaning that they employed Weinstein despite knowing he could be dangerous, and didn’t act on information which showed that he could be a risk.
The lawsuit originated last year and Ormond sued Disney and Miramax, along with her former agents at Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
In it the actress, who rose to fame opposite Brad Pitt in Legends of The Fall and who is now 60, said she had met with Weinstein for dinner in New York in 1995 to discuss her plans to make and star in a film about aviation pioneer Beryl Markham, based on Markham’s memoir West With The Night. (The film was never made.)
She says in the lawsuit the meeting was set up by her agents at CAA – who she is also suing, claiming they failed to protect her from abuse. (They deny that they arranged the dinner or had any idea of Weinstein’s proclivities.)
The actress alleges in the complaint that Weinstein insisted on continuing discussions at her Manhattan apartment, unusually provided for her by Miramax as part of a two-year, first-look deal.
Once there, Ormond, who was so ‘inebriated’ she could not put her keys in the door, says in the lawsuit that despite her protests, Weinstein ‘stripped naked’, forced her to give him a massage, climbed on top of her, masturbated, and then forced her ‘to perform oral sex on him’.
She alleges that in the previous year, when she was at the peak of her fame following the release of the film Legends of the Fall, Weinstein had offered to be a ‘sperm donor’ for her, had pressured her to go to his hotel in London and tried to kiss her in separate encounters. She described his conduct in the complaint as ‘relentless sexual harassment’.
Disney and its subsidiary Miramax, also party to Ormond’s lawsuit, settled with her on March 31st this year. They have sought to keep the amount secret, but paperwork filed with the court reveals that it was $5.75 million. The company says that the payment is not an admission of wrong doing.
The settlement could have major implications for Disney as they were effectively Weinstein’s bosses when they owned Miramax from 1993 until Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob left Miramax in 2005 to set up The Weinstein Company.
If even a fraction of the 80 women who have publicly accused Weinstein of harassment, assault and rape get settlements on a par with Ormond, Disney could face a bill running into nine figures.
Over 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault and rape since allegations first broke in 2017, sparking the #Metoo movement.
He has always denied any non-consensual sexual activity, but has been convicted of rape and sexual assault and remains in prison, serving a 23-year sentence.
In 2021, a judge agreed a $17 million payout from liquidation of the Weinstein Co, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It was to be divided between roughly 50 alleged victims, with a few of those making the most serious allegations getting $500,000.
Weinstein’s former assistant Zelda Perkins and coworker Rowena Chiu got a $250,000 settlement, to be split equally between them and were made subject to a series of NDA agreements which even extended to their therapists and legal team after an alleged assault on Chiu in 1998 and harassment of Perkins prior. The money was paid by Weinstein’s brother Bob, who later said that he had ‘no idea’ about Harvey’s behaviour.
Prior to this, Weinstein paid out $100,000 to the actress Rose McGowan after an alleged rape in 1997.
Ormond said in her suit that Weinstein reported directly to the CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, and that Eisner delegated oversight to others who ‘could not control’ him and found themselves ‘putting out fires the brothers had started, including Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of women’. She said in the lawsuit that some executives directly witnessed this harassment.
In her deposition, Ormond said her UK agent Patricia Marmont had set up her first meeting with Weinstein in 1994 and warned her to deal carefully with the ‘powerful’ executive who might hit on her. This he did in repeated meetings, she testified in her deposition.
Ormond began to write a memoir about her experiences in 2017, parts of which are quoted in court papers.
‘I vaguely remember in London before ever getting to New York, him emerging in a dressing gown… I think he barked at staff who had then left… I think I fairly flatly turned down or laughed off an invite to watch him shower.’
At another point she wrote: ‘He didn’t just laugh at you for being concerned that he of all people would make a pass at you, he’d combine it with implying you were nuts that a guy like him would try, that that was why you were safe to be with him.
‘He would try it on, and each time you got out of it, it felt like a lucky escape, a relief, but I also still wanted to be on his radar.’
After the alleged assault she said in her memoir ‘that I’d done something really stupid with Harvey’ and ‘that it wasn’t rape, that I was miserable, disgusted and confused, but I didn’t know how to frame it beyond that, to identify it as anything beyond that.’ She added that when she complained to her agents at CAA, ‘I did not know… that it was sexual assault.’
Ormond’s lawsuit against Disney and Miramax has now been settled but she remains locked in legal battle with CAA.
In a deposition made public earlier this month, CAA boss Bryan Lourd has denied knowing that Weinstein had a reputation for sexual assault or knowing that Weinstein had ever sexually assaulted anyone prior to the 2017 expose.
Weinstein was also deposed and said that CAA was completely in the clear as far as knowledge of his behaviour went.
The agency is now in conflict with Disney. In a filing, its lawyers complain: ‘In response to an interrogatory that Plaintiff served on Miramax asking whether the company had ‘received any complaints that Harvey Weinstein engaged in Sexual Misconduct,’ Miramax responded that ‘Miramax did not receive any complaints before January 1, 1996 that Harvey Weinstein engaged in sexual assault.’
‘In other words, Miramax has carefully elided the actual requests. Similarly, Disney has flatly refused to produce ‘any documents or information’ concerning ‘actual or alleged sexual misconduct by Weinstein,’ as well as ‘any documents or information’ ‘relating to Plaintiff’s allegations that [Disney] knew or should have known Harvey Weinstein’s propensity to commit sexual assault.’
CAA points out that, in a memoir written in 2017, Ormond said she had met Weinstein in 1994, before she was their client. She signed with them in 1995.
CAA say that the suit is ‘baseless’ and that an internal review has found nothing to support Ormond’s allegations. It says that if it is ordered to compensate Ormond, it will come after Disney, Miramax and Weinstein himself to pay the damages.