Paula Abdul’s Sexual Assault Suit Against Nigel Lythgoe Gets 2025 Trial Date; Grammy Winner Reaches Settlement With ‘American Idol’ Producers
Paula Abdul filed her sexual assault and battery suit against Nigel Lythgoe late last year seeking a jury trial, and she’s going to get one.
The American Idol judge will face off against her So You Think You Can Dance co-star starting on July 28, 2025, a LA Superior Court judge announced today.
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The date was made public in a Case Management hearing Tuesday morning in DLTA on Abdul’s explosive lawsuit against the long time Idol and SYTYCD producer.
However, while the much-accused Lythgoe is looking at a trial next year, his former fellow defendants are now off the hook, at least tentatively. Following up on an April 23 filing statement (read it here) revealing a settlement between the Johnson & Johnson LLP represented Abdul and FremantleMedia North America and American Idols Productions, the one of the ‘Straight Up’ singer’s lawyers said it out loud this AM.
“The parties went to mediation, and the corporate defendants settled out,” Douglas Johnson informed LASC Judge Thomas Long of the deal reached on March 18 with the O’Melveny & Myers LLP represented companies. Additional defendants 19 Entertainment and Dance Nation Productions also reached an undisclosed agreement with the soon to be touring Abdul, who is out on the road with New Kids on the Block this summer.
As usual, no details of the settlement were released earlier this month or today in court, and there are supposedly some finer points still to be finalized. However, Deadline hears plaintiff Abdul was “satisfied” with the outcome, a well-placed source says.
Officially, neither reps for Abdul nor Lythgoe had anything to say about the settlement(s) and the trial next year. Representatives for the latter Lythgoe did not response to request for comment. Abdul’s attorneys had no statement on the settlement, when contacted by Deadline.
In what proved the first of several similar sexual assault suits against the once ubiquitous Lythgoe, Abdul on December 29, 2023 accused the producer and production companies of sexual assault/battery, sexual harassment, gender violence; and negligence.
Shockingly, Abdul alleges that Lythgoe assaulted her twice.
According to her initial complaint, the first assault occurred “during one of American Idol’ s initial seasons” in the early 2000s in a hotel elevator while the Simon Cowell co-judged show was on the road. “Lythgoe shoved Abdul against the wall, then grabbed her genitals and breasts, and began shoving his tongue down her throat,” the document states, with Abdul eventually escaping to her room, locking the door and calling her reps.
The second assault supposedly happened in 2015 during a Season 12 of SYTYCD meeting at Lythgoe’s LA home. “Toward the end of the evening, Lythgoe forced himself on top of Abdul while she was seated on his couch and attempted to kiss her while proclaiming that the two would make an excellent ‘power couple,’” the wide ranging but unspecified damages seeking complaint says of what Abdul assumed was a “professional invitation” from her EP and on-air co-star. “Abdul pushed Lythgoe off of her, explaining that she was not interested in his advances and immediately left.” That same year, Abdul says she also witnessed Lythgoe assaulted one of his assistants when SYTYCD was filming in Las Vegas.
Furthering the attack, Abdul claims in the filing allowed under the December 31st expiring Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, that Lythgoe was perfectly aware of what he had done was “inappropriate and even criminal” – he even made a joke about it.
“Indeed at one point Lythgoe called Abdul and taunted her that they should celebrate because it had been ‘seven years and the statute of limitations had run,’” the 16-page filing stated. “Lythgoe clearly knew that his assaults of Abdul were not just wrong but that he held the power to keep her silent.”
Lythgoe’s first response on December 30 was to go after Abdul’s character.
“While Paula’s history of erratic behavior is well known, I can’t pretend to understand exactly why she would file a lawsuit that she must know is untrue,” he said about his former colleague. “But I can promise that I will fight this appalling smear with everything I have.”
On March 5, he added in a filing in the LASC docket: “Lythgoe will continue to promote the dissemination of truth – which confirms that Abdul is not a victim of sexual assault at the hand of Lythgoe, but it is Lythgoe who has been a victim of Abdul’s appalling lies.” Lythgoe wants Abdul’s suit “dismissed in its entirety with prejudice” ASAP. “Abdul’s lies are underscored by her conduct and statements during and after the time she alleges abuse occurred,” the response filing from the firm of Elkins Kalt Weintraub Reuben Gartside LLP added
A day later, Abdul kicked back: “Mr. Lythgoe’s answer to Ms. Abdul’s complaint is classic victim shaming.”
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