Vin Diesel abuse lawsuit update: Actor gets four claims dropped

Vin Diesel no longer faces four of the employment discrimination claims brought against him, after a Los Angeles judge dismissed those parts of a lawsuit on Tuesday, Variety reports.

However, serious allegations of battery and wrongful termination filed by his former assistant, Asta Jonasson, are still moving forward in court.

Jonasson initially filed the lawsuit in 2023, alleging that Diesel had sexually assaulted her back in 2010. 

According to her claims, the actor pinned her against a wall in a hotel suite and engaged in an inappropriate activity in front of her. Normally, such claims would be considered too old to pursue, falling outside the legal time limit. 

But a new law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2023 — the Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act — allowed some previously expired claims to be revived if they date back to 2009 or later.

Even with that change, Judge Daniel M. Crowley ruled that four of Jonasson’s claims couldn’t move forward. 

The reason, when filing a lawsuit under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), plaintiffs must first submit a complaint to the state Civil Rights Department. At the time of the alleged incident, the deadline to do that was one year. 

Jonasson didn’t meet that deadline.

“Plaintiff’s FEHA claims are time-barred because she failed to timely exhaust her administrative remedies by filing a CRD complaint within one year of the alleged adverse action, a jurisdictional requirement for a FEHA lawsuit,” the judge stated.

Despite the dismissal of the discrimination claims, Jonasson’s other accusations — including retaliation, wrongful termination, sexual battery, negligent supervision and retention, and infliction of emotional distress — remain active. 

These do not require an administrative complaint and were not affected by the judge’s ruling.

Diesel’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, firmly pushed back on the lawsuit when it was first filed. “There is clear evidence which completely refutes these outlandish allegations,” he said.

<!–

–>

<!–

–>