Despite a Los Angeles judge dismissing the final claims in a two-year-old sexual battery and retaliation lawsuit against Vin Diesel filed by a former assistant to the Fast & Furious star, this may not be the finish line in the matter.
“The Court did not decide anything about the truth of Ms. Asta Jonasson’s allegations,” attorney Matthew Hale told Deadline after the ruling came down Wednesday. “The ruling was based on a legal technicality, with which we respectfully disagree. Ms. Jonasson intends to appeal.”
In fact, while “technicality” might be a stretch, the merits of Jonasson’s allegations about what did or did not occur late one 2010 night at Atlanta’s St. Regis Hotel were not addressed at all in Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel M. Crowley’s long summary judgment ruling this morning.
It was almost all about geography.
“It is undisputed that the alleged sexual assault took place in Atlanta, Georgia,” the judge stated in his 13-page ruling. Noting that Jonasson’s claims are “based on an alleged violation of a California statute it fails as a matter of law because California statutes are presumed not to have extraterritorial effect unless the Legislature expressly states otherwise in adopting the statute.”
Detailing an alleged assault by Diesel after a night of clubbing during the filming of Fast Five, Jonasson’s lawyers filed her suit in December 2023. “Ms. Jonasson struggled continually to break free of his grasp, while repeatedly saying no,” the initial filing declared. “Vin Diesel is physically larger and much stronger than Ms. Jonasson, and abused his position of authority as her employer, and was able to easily overpower Ms. Jonasson.”
A couple of hours after the alleged assault in the actor’s hotel suite, Jonasson was kicked to the curb by his sister Samantha Vincent. “Ms. Jonasson was fired for courageously resisting Vin Diesel’s sexual assault, Vin Diesel would be protected, and his sexual assault covered up,” the 10-claim suit said.
“Let me be very clear, Vin Diesel categorically denies this claim in its entirety,” Diesel’s lawyer Bryan Freedman replied at the time of the filing, noting how long ago it all supposedly occurred.
Jonasson filed her accusations under the Golden State’s statute of limitations-lifting Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act, which has no bearing on something that went down in the Peach State 15 years ago, the judge ruled.
“Plaintiff’s causes of action impermissibly apply California law to extraterritorial conduct in the State of Georgia,” Crowley adds. “California authorities make clear that California law cannot be applied to any of plaintiff’s claims.”
Back in June, citing statute of limitations expirations, the same judge threw out a quartet of Jonasson’s claims filed under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.
Today’s ruling on the half dozen remaining claims comes after the judge heard arguments on the matter in his downtown Los Angeles courtroom earlier this month.
At that hearing, Hale pitched Crowley that this was very much a California case. Along with the fact that Fast Five was shooting in Georgia on a temporary basis and everybody would be back in California soon enough, the gist of Hale’s POV was that his client and Diesel are both residents of California, and Jonasson was hired by the actor’s California-based One Race Productions (which was also a defendant in the case) after an sit-down at the company’s LA HQ.
In response, Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley LLP’s Sean Hardy, one of Diesel’s lawyers, essentially argued that the allegations were an out-of-state crime and hence needed to be addressed in Georgia.
As evidenced by today and a tentative ruling earlier this month, Hardy’s argument won the day, and has put the brakes on the case heading to trial.
“We are grateful that the court put an end to this meritless lawsuit,” Freedman told Deadline this afternoon. “We are pleased that this matter has been resolved entirely.”
Well, perhaps.
