Bob Dylan’s lawyers seeking ‘monetary sanctions’ over sexual abuse case

Lawyers for Bob Dylan are seeking “monetary sanctions” against the legal team that filed a suit accusing the musician of sexual abuse.

The lawsuit, which claimed Dylan sexually abused a 12-year-old girl in 1965, was dropped in July and Billboard reports that the singer’s lawyers are now pursuing sanctions, citing “brazen misconduct”.

Orin Snyder, who leads Dylan’s legal team, wrote to a federal judge to say that the lawyers for the woman, Daniel W Isaacs and Peter J Gleason, “should not have brought this action – accusing [Dylan] of a heinous crime – if they did not intend to responsibly litigate it”.

The woman, identified as JC, alleged that Dylan abused her in his room at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan when he was 23 or 24 years old. Dylan denied the claims, with his representatives stating the “chronological impossibility” of the allegation given his well-documented whereabouts during the period and describing the case as a “lawyer-driven sham”.

Prior to the lawsuit being dropped, Dylan’s legal team accused the woman of destroying evidence after she failed to submit emails and text messages by a court-mandated deadline. She also appeared to have discharged her legal team – a claim that Snyder disputed in his letter, pushing back against the claim “that Plaintiff had voluntarily ‘discharged’ her counsel”.

Snyder wrote to the judge: “Mr Isaacs and Mr Gleason failed to produce documents they should have possessed and reviewed before ever bringing this lawsuit in the first place.

“As we said in open court last week, many of the documents we have seen, including scores of emails between Plaintiff and key third parties whom counsel apparently never even bothered to interview, undermine and contradict Plaintiff’s allegations.”

Snyder called it a “paradigm case for sanctions to address counsel’s brazen discovery misconduct”, adding that “counsel flouted their discovery obligations for months and ignored warnings from the Court about their failure to produce documents”.

Isaacs responded in a letter saying the lawsuit was “brought in good faith and with the intent of responsibly litigating the matter”. He blamed the issues on the “recalcitrance” of his client, whom he said refused to hand over key materials despite repeated requests.

“At no point did either Mr Gleason or I wilfully withhold discovery or engage in discovery misconduct,” he wrote. “We attempted to comply as best we could given the circumstances, including plaintiff suffering PTSD, which was exacerbated when her identity was illegally made public following the commencement of this action.”

It is unclear how much compensation Dylan’s lawyers are seeking; one form of sanctions could entail Isaacs and Gleason replaying Dylan’s legal fees, according to Billboard.