Steve Tyler finally has a court date for his long-running sex abuse lawsuit.
The suit accusing the Aerosmith frontman of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s is headed for a 3 May trial.
The matter’s fifth judge, Lawrence Riff, vowed on Monday that he would see the case through to its conclusion after his most recent predecessor, Judge Patricia Young, stepped aside in September with just two weeks to go before a prior trial date.
At a hearing in downtown Los Angeles, the new judge also said he was prepared to reconsider any rulings made by his predecessor.
Lawyers for the plaintiff, Julia Misley, née Halcomb, indicated they would challenge a key ruling by Young that dismissed Misley’s claims involving alleged misconduct in Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington, leaving only those involving California.
In her lawsuit filed in December 2022 and reported by Rolling Stone, Misley claimed that Tyler had sexually abused her for years beginning in 1973, when she was a high school student and he was 25.
Tyler denied the claims, arguing that he lived with Misley in Boston for most of their relationship, where the age of consent was 16. Misley alleges she was groomed into a three-year relationship, during which time Tyler became her legal guardian so that she could travel with him.
She noted that reading Tyler’s memoir led her to a series of realisations about the trauma she had experienced.
In his 2011 book, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, Tyler recalled the guardianship arrangement.
“I was so in love, I almost took a teen bride. I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights, and her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state,” he wrote.
