{"id":10612,"date":"2026-05-08T03:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/will-smith-defeats-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-from-tour-violinist\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T03:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:40:07","slug":"will-smith-defeats-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-from-tour-violinist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/will-smith-defeats-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-from-tour-violinist\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Smith Defeats Sexual Harassment Lawsuit From Tour Violinist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tWill Smith has won a court order throwing out the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by an electric violinist who performed on his Based on a True Story<\/em> tour last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tA court order from Tuesday (May 5), obtained by Billboard<\/em>, granted Smith\u2019s request to dismiss the claims lodged by Brian King Joseph in December. Joseph, a violinist who came in third place on America\u2019s Got Talent<\/em> in 2018, alleged he was illegally fired from Smith\u2019s international tour after reporting that someone had broken into his hotel room during a Las Vegas stop and left sexually suggestive materials, along with a note reading, \u201cBrian, I\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tJudge Michael Shultz found that while the note was sexual in nature, its existence does not rise to the level of workplace sexual misconduct. The judge also said it\u2019s not reasonable for Joseph to assume without any evidence that Smith or any of his staffers are to blame for this supposed break-in, which they unequivocally deny.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe allegations do not support a severe and pervasive concerted pattern of harassment sufficient to create an abusive working environment,\u201d reads the court order.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge held that these deficiencies doom not only Joseph\u2019s sexual harassment claims, but also his allegations of wrongful termination and retaliation. That\u2019s because, according to the court\u2019s ruling, Joseph hasn\u2019t shown that he was fired as a direct result of reporting something improper in the workplace.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, the case is not necessarily done for good; Joseph is permitted to try again and rework his lawsuit against Smith if desired. His attorney did not immediately return an inquiry as to whether he plans to make such an amendment.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Smith also did not return a request for comment on the dismissal ruling. Lawyers for the actor and rapper previously said in court papers that Joseph\u2019s \u201cfalse and salacious\u201d claims are \u201cuntrue, inflammatory, legally baseless, and are nothing but an attempted money grab.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Will Smith has won a court order throwing out the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by an electric violinist who performed on his Based on a True Story tour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7910,1532,303,301,540,1866,7206],"class_list":["post-10612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-defeats","tag-harassment","tag-lawsuit","tag-sexual","tag-smith","tag-tour","tag-violinist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}