{"id":7371,"date":"2025-08-15T05:13:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/singer-wins-fines-against-lawyers\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T05:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:13:03","slug":"singer-wins-fines-against-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/singer-wins-fines-against-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Singer Wins Fines Against Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tBob Dylan has won legal penalties against two lawyers who filed \u2014 and then quickly dropped \u2014 a lawsuit accusing the music legend of sexually abusing a child in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\n\tFiled in 2021, the case featured salacious allegations about Dylan, but music historians quickly said it wasn\u2019t even chronologically plausible \u2014 and the unnamed accuser abruptly dismissed the case after the star\u2019s lawyers accused her of destroying key evidence.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn a decision issued Wednesday (Aug. 13), a federal appeals court upheld monetary penalties against the woman\u2019s lawyers (Daniel W. Isaacs<\/strong> and Peter J. Gleason<\/strong>), whom Dylan\u2019s attorneys have accused of making \u201cheinous and false allegations\u201d without sufficient vetting.<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan\u2019s lawyers argued that they only found out the accuser had failed to turn over crucial emails after sending subpoenas \u2014 an argument that the appeals court called \u201cparticularly telling\u201d in the new ruling against Isaacs and Gleason.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHad [Dylan]\u2019s counsel not sought this third-party discovery, it is probable that responsive communications in [the accuser]\u2019s possession might never have come to light,\u201d wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. \u201cAnd all of this transpired despite the [judge]\u2019s repeated, emphatic warnings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough hotly contested by both sides, the penalties against the lawyers are relatively modest: $5,000 against Isaacs and $3,000 against Gleason. In court filings, Dylan\u2019s lawyers have called them \u201cessentially symbolic\u201d and a \u201cfraction\u201d of the money he spent defeating the case.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIsaacs and Gleason\u2019s client, identified in court documents only as J.C., filed her case in August 2021, claiming Dylan had abused her multiple times at Manhattan\u2019s Chelsea Hotel in April and May 1965. The lawsuit said he provided her with drugs and alcohol and \u201cexploited\u201d his status as part of a plan to \u201csexually molest her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan vehemently denied the allegations, and rock historians quickly cast doubt<\/a> on them, saying the folk star was on tour in California and overseas during the months in question. Less than a year after the case was filed, it was dropped without a settlement.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat abrupt end came after months of chaos. Dylan\u2019s lawyers first accused Isaacs and Gleason of refusing to cooperate with discovery, then charged that their client, J.C., had deleted key evidence. At one point, a judge implored the two lawyers to comply with such orders \u201cfor the love of god.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven after the case was dropped, Dylan\u2019s attorneys sought harsh sanctions, arguing that the pair of lawyers should not be allowed to simply walk away from the case after leveling such serious allegations and then refusing to properly litigate them.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAfter the judge handed down the $8,000 combined sanction, the pair of lawyers appealed the penalty to the Second Circuit, arguing that they had \u201crepeatedly attempted\u201d to get their \u201crecalcitrant\u201d client to hand over the materials in question. They called it \u201cmanifestly unjust\u201d to hold them responsible for the accuser\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Dylan\u2019s lawyers pressed the court to uphold the fine, arguing that even the \u201cmost rudimentary investigation would have revealed the claims to be false\u201d and that Isaacs and Gleason had stymied the process by which Dylan could \u201cvindicate his innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Dylan was subjected to almost a year of litigation \u2014 facing the most vile allegations imaginable \u2014 during which appellants engaged in a pattern of deliberate discovery misconduct that hindered Mr. Dylan\u2019s ability to fight this false claim,\u201d his lawyers wrote. \u201cNow, Appellants bring this appeal in a last-ditch effort to get away scot-free.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Wednesday\u2019s decision, the appeals court sided firmly with Dylan, rejecting Isaacs and Gleason\u2019s various arguments against the sanctions. The judges cited an earlier decision that says such penalties are based \u201cnot only [on] the straw that finally broke the camel\u2019s back\u201d but on \u201call the straws that the recalcitrant party piled on over the course of the lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cHere, straws abound,\u201d the appeals court wrote. \u201cThe record is replete with instances of Isaacs and Gleason failing to discharge their discovery obligations under the relevant law and district court\u2019s orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a detailed statement to Billboard<\/em>, Gleason said he was \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d with the ruling but that \u201cthis matter is not over.\u201d He said his client had made \u201cwhat we believed to be credible allegations\u201d against Dylan; he also claimed that Dylan\u2019s law firm, the prestigious Gibson Dunn, had previously represented him personally and had a conflict of interest in the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn my humble opinion, this whole matter reeks of the courts allowing the largess of the white shoe law firms tipping the scales of justice in their favor,\u201d Gleason said. \u201cI fully intend to delve deep into the integrity of the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his own statement to Billboard<\/em>, Dylan\u2019s attorney, Brian Ascher<\/strong>, said the arguments regarding Gibson Dunn had already been \u201csummarily rejected\u201d by the judge overseeing the case when it was raised during the litigation: \u201cThis is sour grapes,\u201d Ascher said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan has won legal penalties against two lawyers who filed \u2014 and then quickly dropped \u2014 a lawsuit accusing the music legend of sexually abusing a child […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1827,7,1805,882],"class_list":["post-7371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-fines","tag-lawyers","tag-singer","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371","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=7371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}