Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is demanding to go to trial this fall as scheduled, in a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault in the 1970s — saying he wants his “day in court” rather than have the case “continue to drag on.”
The rock legend is facing a looming trial in October over accusations leveled by Julia Misley, who claims Tyler “groomed” and “manipulated” her as a teenager decades ago — and that he essentially admitted it by referring to her as his almost “child bride” in a memoir.
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Misley’s attorneys want the courtroom showdown pushed back, arguing in court filings this week that they’ve faced “unavoidable delays” in preparing for trial. But in their own court filing on Tuesday (Aug. 19), Tyler’s attorneys blasted that move as unfair to their client.
“For the past two and a half years, Tyler has been diligently preparing for and awaiting his day in court to defend against Plaintiff’s unmeritorious accusations,” writes the star’s lawyer, David Long-Daniels. “Tyler deserves to see this matter resolved on the current trial timeline, so that it may have his day in court and not have this case continue to drag on.”
Misley (formerly Holcomb) sued Tyler in 2022, claiming she was the unnamed person he referred to in his memoir as a “teen bride” he almost married. She says he abused his fame to win control over her — including signing an agreement with her parents to take legal guardianship — and sexually assaulted her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old.
In efforts to dismiss the case, Tyler hasn’t denied the basic facts. But his lawyers have characterized the pairing as a consensual “romantic relationship” between a man “in his mid-twenties at the time” and a woman “between the ages of 16 and 19” — arguing that it was legal under the age of consent. That motion remains pending, awaiting a ruling.
If Tyler’s request is denied, the case will head to a jury trial on Oct. 1. But in a court filing Tuesday, Misley’s attorneys asked to push the trial back by roughly four months, arguing they needed the “short continuance” to fully prepare for the courtroom battle.
“Given that sexual abuse of plaintiff occurred in the 1970s, the parties have encountered significant difficulty locating crucial witnesses, scheduling depositions of those witnesses, working through issues with reluctant witnesses, and taking depositions in multiple states,” Misley’s lawyers wrote. “This has caused unavoidable delays in discovery.”
But in Tyler’s response, his lawyers say this is the first they’re hearing of the need to delay the trial date, which has been on the books since April.
“It was incumbent upon counsel to raise any scheduling conflict with Tyler and the Court as soon as it arose — not lay in wait while Tyler diligently prepared for trial with full knowledge the existing trial date would not work,” Tyler’s attorneys wrote. “Under the circumstances, this is not ‘good cause’ warranting a continuance.”
Even when her lawsuit was first filed, Misley’s allegations against Tyler were not new. She made similar accusations in a 2011 article published by the anti-abortion website LifesiteNews, and she made the same claims in 2020 during an appearance on Fox News.
But in 2022, she took her allegations to court — accusing Tyler of using his “power as a well-known musician and rock star” in order to “gain access to groom, manipulate [and] exploit” her.
The lawsuit repeatedly cited Tyler’s memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, in which the singer explicitly referenced a relationship with an underage girl. “She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit. “I was so in love I almost took a teen bride.”
The lawsuit alleged that Tyler convinced Misley’s parents to grant him guardianship over her — an accusation that also came with quotes from his memoir: “I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state.”