{"id":2444,"date":"2024-08-29T15:10:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/marilyn-manson-appeals-in-defamation-case-against-evan-rachel-wood\/"},"modified":"2024-08-29T15:10:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:10:46","slug":"marilyn-manson-appeals-in-defamation-case-against-evan-rachel-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/marilyn-manson-appeals-in-defamation-case-against-evan-rachel-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Marilyn Manson Appeals In Defamation Case Against Evan Rachel Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tMarilyn Manson<\/strong> has launched an appeal seeking to revive his defamation lawsuit against ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood<\/strong>, arguing a lower judge who dismissed much of the case ignored key evidence.<\/p>\n

\n\tManson (real name Brian Warner<\/strong>) sued Wood in 2022, claiming she had \u201csecretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured\u201d women to make false abuse allegations against him. But a Los Angeles judge tossed out most of the case in a ruling last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat ruling came under California\u2019s anti-SLAPP statute \u2014 a law that aims to make it easier for judges to quickly dismiss cases that threaten free speech. Wood\u2019s lawyers claimed Manson\u2019s case was exactly that: a prominent musician using a lawsuit to try to silence someone speaking out about alleged abuse.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in an appeal lodged on Tuesday, Manson\u2019s lawyers argued that a lower judge had repeatedly misapplied that statute to prematurely end a valid lawsuit that had been aimed at exposing a \u201cmalicious campaign\u201d by Wood and others.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is an appeal of an order granting two anti-SLAPP motions, in which the trial court rubber-stamped Defendants\u2019 assertions of \u2018protected activity\u2019 before weighing and disregarding evidence to conclude that plaintiff Brian Warner could never prevail,\u201d his attorneys write.<\/p>\n

\n\tManson also claims that the judge ignored key elements of the case, including \u201cbombshell\u201d testimony from another Manson accuser named Ashley Morgan Smithline<\/strong>, who says she \u201csuccumbed to pressure\u201d from Wood to make \u201cuntrue\u201d accusations against the singer.<\/p>\n

\n\tWood strongly denied those allegations, and the judge ultimately refused to consider Smithline\u2019s testimony because it had been filed far past a key deadline for submitting evidence. In Wednesday\u2019s appeal, Manson\u2019s lawyers say that was a clear and reversible error.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe trial court prioritized convenience over the core function of the anti- SLAPP statute, which is to dispose of truly meritless suits before discovery,\u201d Manson\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\tWood is one of several women to accuse Manson of serious sexual wrongdoing over the past several years. Manson has denied all of the allegations, and many of the lawsuits filed against him have since been dropped, dismissed or settled.<\/p>\n

\n\tManson filed the current lawsuit against Wood in March 2022, accusing her and a woman named Illma Gore of launching an \u201corganized attack\u201d that had derailed his career. His lawyer said the women had carried out \u201ca campaign of malicious and unjustified attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Wood quickly fought back, moving to strike Manson\u2019s case under the anti-SLAPP law: \u201cFor years, plaintiff Brian Warner raped and tortured defendant Evan Rachel Wood and threatened retaliation if she told anyone about it,\u201d her attorneys wrote. \u201cWarner has now made good on those threats by filing the present lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May 2023, Judge Teresa A. Beaudet<\/strong> largely granted that motion, ruling that Manson had not sufficiently shown that he would ultimately be able to prove many of those accusations against Wood, including that she had been \u201cpressuring multiple women to make false accusations,\u201d as well as the allegation that she had forged a letter from the FBI.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnti-SLAPP laws, which exist in states across the country, work by putting more burden than usual on defamation plaintiffs like Manson, forcing them to clearly show at the outset that their case is legitimate. In last year\u2019s decision, Judge Beaudet said Manson had failed to do so.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe court does not find that plaintiff has demonstrated a probability of prevailing on his [intentional infliction of emotional distress] claim based on the FBI Letter,\u201d the judge wrote, referring to one of Manson\u2019s specific legal claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marilyn Manson has launched an appeal seeking to revive his defamation lawsuit against ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood, arguing a lower judge who dismissed much of the case ignored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[782,294,720,3220,3219,3218,3221,3222],"class_list":["post-2444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-appeals","tag-case","tag-defamation","tag-evan","tag-manson","tag-marilyn","tag-rachel","tag-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444","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=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}