Lawsuits

I
n 2003, Heather Evans Taylor agreed to take a helicopter sightseeing tour with a pilot friend she’d met through her bank teller job in San Diego. When she arrived at Montgomery Field Airport, she was surprised to see that Tommy Lee, the lanky and colorfully tattooed Mötley Crüe drummer, was already waiting to join them, she says.

What allegedly happened next was described in excruciating detail in a sexual assault lawsuit Taylor filed against Lee in December 2023. She claimed Lee and the pilot, David Martz, started drinking and snorting cocaine immediately after takeoff. She alleged Lee forcibly kissed, groped, digitally penetrated her, and tried to force her to give him oral sex – all while Martz looked on, smiling. (Through his lawyer, Sasha Frid, Lee has previously “vehemently and categorically” denied the allegations. Frid declined to comment for this article.)

“It was a horrific experience. I felt like they made a mockery out of me,” Taylor tells Rolling Stone, revealing her full identity in her first media interview after originally filing her complaint as a Jane Doe. Sitting at her dining room table, her eyes welling with tears, Taylor says she flew back in stunned silence with Martz after they allegedly dropped Lee off at the Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles. “I never would have thought something like that would happen to me,” she says. “I felt so abandoned and alone.”

Taylor, 52, says the alleged incident left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, and anxiety. She was too afraid to report the alleged incident to police, she says, so she barely talked about it for years and tried to move on. Eventually, she went on medication, started rescuing dogs, and began intensive psychotherapy. She thought her chance to seek legal redress had long since lapsed, until the California legislature passed the Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act in late 2022. The act opened two retroactive filing windows for otherwise expired claims of adult sexual abuse. Claims for incidents prior to 2009, like Taylor’s, had to meet two specific criteria: First, plaintiffs had to establish that a private business was legally responsible for damages arising from the assault. Second, they had to allege that the business covered up a previous claim of sexual assault.

The new law, known as AB 2777, was part of a wave of legislation across the country recognizing that many survivors of sexual assault take years or even decades to step forward due to lasting trauma, social stigma, or fear of retribution. Unlike New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which functioned as a catch-all that allowed plaintiffs to sue virtually any individual or institution, the California statute was more tailored. Beyond requiring a cover-up for decades-old claims, it also barred cases against public institutions such as schools and law enforcement agencies. The vague wording also made it difficult to go after the alleged perpetrators themselves as individual defendants.

But back in 2023, the law seemed to offer Taylor a real chance to sue Lee and maybe even Martz, though Martz had died in a single-engine Cessna crash in 2015. (According to the Los Angeles Times, which reported on Martz’s death, the pilot had a lengthy disciplinary record that included multiple license suspensions. One revocation in 2009 came after Martz was filmed receiving oral sex from a Swedish porn star while hovering over San Diego. Martz also faced misdemeanor charges for landing a helicopter on a public road in the Hollywood Hills in 2006 to collect Lee for a Nine Inch Nails concert. He received three years of probation.)

Taylor says she initially considered the law “promising,” so she got her records in order, linked with a law firm, and filed her lawsuit in December 2023. She was still in a “vulnerable” place, she says, but she felt incredible relief when she signed the papers, got a stamped copy, and talked about it with her husband.

“I was terrified yet excited at the moment I filed,” Taylor says. She recalls thinking to herself, “I get to reclaim who I am as a person. I get to take control. I’m in control, nobody else is now.”

Less than four months later, though, a California judge stopped her in her tracks, dismissing her entire complaint on a technicality. The judge said she failed to give enough detail in her complaint to support the allegation of a cover-up. Taylor says she broke down and cried.

“It was very, very frustrating,” she says. “It felt like the judge and the law were punishing the wrong person. I’m not the one who committed the crime. But it felt like I was the one being held accountable.”

Taylor’s shock turned to outrage when Lee’s lawyer publicly praised the judge’s decision, saying it proved Taylor had no case. The attorney called her allegations “false and bogus.” For Taylor, the provisional dismissal proved something else – that AB 2777 had led many hopeful plaintiffs to a “brick wall.” It allowed the judge to reject her lawsuit before even considering the merits of her abuse claim.

A judge gave Taylor 20 days to try again with an amended lawsuit. But 11 days later, in a surprise move, Taylor and her lawyers made the strategic decision to voluntarily withdraw her entire lawsuit. In a statement to Rolling Stone at the time, they said a second round of proposed legislation, if successful, would likely give Taylor a better shot at success. In the meantime, they didn’t want to risk another adverse ruling from the judge that could permanently terminate Taylor’s right to sue Lee.

Through his lawyer, Lee again claimed victory. “This dismissal is a complete vindication for Tommy Lee,” Frid said in a statement to Rolling Stone in May 2024. Taylor says it was painful to go online in the immediate aftermath. Some online were calling her a “fraud,” she says. As a Jane Doe plaintiff at the time, she felt powerless to speak up. She desperately wanted to show people the handwritten letter she says she received from Martz, inviting her to lunch just weeks before the alleged assault, but she felt cast aside.

“Everybody came for me,” she says. “I felt silenced. I wanted people to know I’m real. I’m not this ghost.”

Through it all, Taylor says she never considered giving up. “I dismissed the case so I could resume it later,” she explains. “I’m still planning on going full force into this so I can get some type of justice.” 

Taylor says she’s hopeful she’ll get that chance with a version of the legislation that her lawyers cited last year. The bill, AB 250, is now sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting a decision by Monday. If made into law, AB 250 would give Taylor and other plaintiffs like her, including Bill Cosby accuser Victoria Valentino, a fully retroactive filing window for any claim of adult sexual abuse against an individual perpetrator, no matter how old, for a new two-year period ending Dec. 31, 2027. In what legal experts are calling a potentially seismic shift for plaintiffs like Taylor, the law would allow suits against alleged individual perpetrators without the need to prove a cover-up. (Claims against businesses would still require evidence of a cover-up.)

An Uphill Battle

Taylor says she filed her initial lawsuit with the belief that AB 2777 allowed her to sue Lee as an individual and then use the discovery process to find enough facts to meet the law’s other requirements. She, and other plaintiffs like her, faced an uphill battle. In court filings, their lawyers said AB 2777 included language that plaintiffs could revive “any claim,” including against an individual, so long as the overall lawsuit also alleged a business defendant engaged in a previous cover-up. But lawyers representing the accused countered that the law, as written, only mentioned liability on the part of businesses and never explicitly stated that perpetrators could be sued. 

The law’s ambiguity became an immediate battleground as defendants like Lee sought early dismissals on procedural grounds. Before long, judges started interpreting AB 2777 to completely exclude individual defendants. In one sexual assault lawsuit filed against Nigel Lythgoe, a judge rejected all the claims against the American Idol producer as an individual, saying they could never be filed again. The judge otherwise allowed the case to proceed against the TV production company Lythgoe was leading at the time, though the plaintiffs later filed a dismissal. (At a nearby courthouse, however, a different judge made a completely opposite ruling in a similar case, allowing a music industry CEO accused of sexual assault to remain on the hook as an individual defendant, despite his denials.)

While AB 2777 was clearly intended to rein in powerful institutions and employers with cultures of silence that condoned abuse, it seemed to toss out hurdles for plaintiffs suing less conventional defendants. The bar appeared particularly high for lawsuits involving the entertainment industry, where alleged perpetrators might work for an obscure, closely guarded company in which they’re the sole employee.

“Before speaking up, I felt like I was lying to myself … The silence was eating me alive.”

Heather Evans Taylor

In the case of Lee, Taylor argued that she needed more time to conduct discovery to identify a company she suspected Lee had at the time of her alleged assault. She had also sued his touring company, Mayhem, but Lee claimed the corporation was suspended in February 2023. Taylor argued it was merely delinquent.

AB 2777 also raised questions about what exactly qualified as a cover-up. Its text described a cover-up as a “concerted effort to hide evidence” and incentivize silence, and it pointed to the use of nondisclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements as examples. But legal experts say the wording was murky, making judicial interpretation a moving target. The judge who provisionally dismissed Taylor’s claim said during one court hearing that Lee’s lifestyle leading up to the alleged assault, described as “salacious and hedonistic” in Taylor’s original complaint, had the court questioning Taylor’s ability to allege a prior cover-up at all. The judge also found fault with Taylor’s claims that Lee “must” have had a loan-out company in 2003 because it was “industry standard.” 

Taylor and her lawyers could have forged ahead, trying to address the court’s concerns, but it would have been a gamble. And it could have ended with a ruling barring her from ever bringing her claims again.

Valentino, the former Playboy model who claims Cosby drugged and raped her in 1969, ended up in a similar situation. She filed a lawsuit against Cosby using AB 2777 in June 2023, alleging the disgraced comedian convinced her to swallow two pills during a meeting at a restaurant while she was grieving the drowning death of her six-year-old son. Valentino, 82, alleged Cosby drove her to a nearby office and raped her while she was too immobilized to fight back. (Cosby has denied the allegations through his spokesman.)

A judge provisionally dismissed Valentino’s lawsuit in 2024, ruling she hadn’t pleaded “any facts” establishing liability on the part of the three Cosby-linked companies she was also suing. The judge ruled she also failed to show any “concerted effort” to stage a cover-up. Though Valentino claimed Cosby sexually assaulted six different women “before or around the same time,” possibly drugging them in what she claimed amounted to a “cover-up,” the judge pushed back. “The statute requires a cover-up by the entity,” the judge wrote. (​​In 2018, Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated assault on Andrea Constand, a woman he had mentored at Temple University. The comedian, 88, was released from prison in 2021 after serving only part of his three-to-10-year sentence after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his jury conviction, finding that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a former district attorney should have protected Cosby from criminal liability. He has denied allegations of sexual assault from dozens of accusers.)

“Waiting for Justice”

With AB 250, California Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry set out to fix what her office described as the “problem” with AB 2777. In a fact sheet published online, the office said AB 2777 “applied only to claims against entities that covered up a sexual assault, not the individuals who perpetrated sexual assault.” The office said AB 250 also was needed to extend the statute of limitations until December 31, 2027, thereby reviving important related claims such as wrongful termination and sexual harassment. The bill also ditches the burdensome cover-up requirement for claims against individuals.

“We provide more clarity that allegations of sexual assault against a perpetrator do not require proof of a cover-up by an entity,” John Ferrera, the chief of staff to Aguiar-Curry, tells Rolling Stone. “The survivor can sue the perpetrator alone, without having to prove there was a cover-up.”

Aguiar-Curry says the legislation is critical to protect survivors who fell through the cracks of AB 2777. “These survivors are frozen right now, and they’re just waiting for justice. The governor’s action [signing the bill] will help make justice possible for all of them,” she tells Rolling Stone. “It would send a clear message that California will stand up for our survivors.” Without the bill, she says, “many survivors would lose their last chance to seek accountability and closure.”

Taylor and Valentino both say they plan to re-file their lawsuits in the new year if the bill becomes law. For his part, Newsom hasn’t signaled how he’ll proceed. He can sign AB 250, veto it, or do nothing, which would allow it to become law on Jan. 1 without his stated approval. “The Governor has until October 13 to act on legislation currently on his desk,” a Newsom spokesperson says. “Our office does not typically comment on pending legislation.”

“He Suggests I Call the Police”

As she awaits the fate of AB 250, Taylor says she’s eager to tell her story, regardless of whether she’ll be able to file again. She opens a manila folder and fishes out the handwritten letter that she says Martz sent to her before the alleged assault. The postmark reads Dec. 20, 2002. “I would love to go to lunch. Give me a call or email me,” Martz allegedly wrote.

Taylor says she first met Martz in February 2002. He opened a business banking account with her, and they struck up a friendship. He repeatedly invited her to join him for a sightseeing ride in his helicopter, she says, and while she was hesitant at first, she eventually agreed.

In her lawsuit, Taylor said that when she arrived at the airfield that day, Martz informed her there was a last-minute change of plans. They walked toward the hangar, and Lee was already waiting by the chopper, she claimed.

“Within a matter of minutes of being airborne, Martz pulled out alcohol he had stored in the helicopter and began to mix drinks,” the lawsuit alleged. Taylor said Martz and Lee drank, smoked marijuana, and snorted cocaine during the flight. Martz purportedly asked Taylor through the headphone system why she wasn’t drinking and said she should “just relax.”

Taylor claimed Martz urged her to join them in the cockpit to get the best view. Feeling “immense pressure” to meet Martz’s demands while captive in the tiny aircraft, she acquiesced, the filing said. Almost immediately, Lee began groping and kissing her, she claimed. When she attempted to pull away, he allegedly “became more forceful.”

“At one point, Lee penetrated plaintiff with his fingers while fondling her breasts. Lee then pulled down his pants and attempted to force plaintiff’s head toward his genitals. By this point, plaintiff was in tears, but she had nowhere to go — she was trapped with little mobility to leave the cockpit,” the lawsuit said.

“Our trauma needs to be honored and valued for what it was.”

Victoria Valentino

As she recounts that day to Rolling Stone, Taylor says she feels foolish for ever believing Martz was her friend. “He wasn’t who I thought he was,” she says. “I trusted him, and he took advantage of the situation.” 

She then pulls out a tiny diary with a rainbow-colored unicorn on its tattered cover. She flips through several loose pages filled with cursive writing. She penned them in the days after the alleged assault, she says.

“So embarrassed. Feel awful, feel violated. Never did I expect to be used and taken advantage of,” she wrote on a page dated Feb. 23, 2003. “Tommy Lee hurt me. I never told anyone. I should have went to the police,” she scrawled on another page dated March 7, 2003. “Asking myself how Tommy Lee could sexually assault me and I didn’t tell. I’m scared,” she purportedly wrote on March 18, 2003.

The diary is so old, she says, the binding fell apart. She’s not sure it would be admissible at a possible trial, but she’s adamant it’s a true record of her life at the time, filled with daily observations, many having nothing to do with Lee. One page dated April 8, 2003, reads, “Told my friend Ed what happened to me. He suggests I call the police.”

The friend, Ed Banda, confirms to Rolling Stone that he remembers Taylor telling him in 2003 that she’d been assaulted by a celebrity. “We had a friendship, but she was very hesitant,” he says. “She didn’t know what to do. She was figuring stuff out. She was just worried about being ostracized.” 

Banda, 62, says they later reconnected when they worked together at a grocery store in 2014. She told him she was still considering the possibility of “pursuing it,” he says. He told her she should, he recalls. “It does affect you,” he says, recalling that her voice would quiver. Ultimately, she wasn’t ready, he says. “She wanted to keep tight-lipped about it.”

Taylor says her trauma from the alleged assault turned her into a virtual recluse. She started taking anti-anxiety medication, which helped. Then she started rescuing animals around 2010, and found it therapeutic. When one of her therapists moved out of state, she started seeing Dr. Neenah Amaral in September 2022. “I can corroborate that [the alleged incident with Lee] was part of the reason she came in. It was for the PTSD and the anxiety based around that story,” Amaral tells Rolling Stone. “That was the primary topic. In my professional opinion, I believe her.”

“I Probably Blamed Myself”

Like Taylor, Valentino is hopeful AB 250 will become law. Last January, she lost her home and a lifetime’s worth of memorabilia in the wildfire that swept through her neighborhood in Altadena. She says having a chance to sue Cosby again would give her a “purpose” amid so much loss.

Speaking by phone earlier this month, Valentino recalls the night Cosby allegedly assaulted her. She was still reeling from the drowning death of her son in 1969, she says, and the purported assault plunged her into an even deeper depression. She had no idea Cosby had other accusers at the time, and going to the police never crossed her mind.

“I probably blamed myself. I didn’t feel good enough, powerful enough, and this was the sixties. I had been out marching against Vietnam and for civil rights. Back in the day, we smoked pot, it was a felony,” she recalls. “It never occurred to me that the police were  safe to go [to]. It never occurred to me that I would ever find justice with them, or protection. So I just sucked it up.”

But after Constand first sued Cosby in 2005 and comedian Hannibal Buress reignited interest in the Cosby allegations with a viral joke in 2014, she stepped forward with her allegations and became an outspoken critic of Cosby. She attended the Santa Monica civil trial where a jury found Cosby liable for the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl, Judy Huth, at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. Speaking with Rolling Stone after that verdict in June 2022, Valentino said the statute of limitations for her alleged assault was “so far gone,” there was “no hope” she could ever bring a lawsuit, but she was “thrilled to death” for Huth’s victory. Three months later, on Sept. 19, 2022, Gov. Newsom approved AB 2777, setting the stage for her own lawsuit.

She says “an opportunity to seek tangible justice” would be deeply meaningful. “I’m not looking forward to being lacerated by his attorney,” she says, “but I want him to face the consequences of his actions. Women are not expendable.” She argues there’s no statute of limitations on murder, “yet this is a murder of a woman’s spirit, a murder of a woman’s career.”

Valentino says Newsom signing AB 250 would send a clear message of support. “We need some kind of recourse. Our trauma needs to be honored and valued for what it was. Our lives need to be respected,” she says. “My assault changed the entire trajectory of my life.” (Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, declined to comment for this piece.)

“I Let It Consume Me”

Legal experts interviewed by Rolling Stone agree that AB 250, if made law, would address many of the roadblocks plaintiffs faced with AB 2777. The new legislation still keeps public entities off-limits, but it closes the loophole surrounding perpetrator defendants.

“It’s huge,” says Karen Barth Menzies, a partner at the Justice Law Collaborative law firm who’s helped plaintiffs use California revival statutes to sue celebrity defendants including Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter and Mexican superstar Gloria Trevi. She said AB 2777 “confused” a lot of plaintiffs and lawyers alike, leaving many unwilling to take on the high cost and risk of litigation, especially against wealthy opponents. 

“When they passed AB 2777, it was retroactive without limitation and we expected the floodgates to open, in a way, because, unfortunately, sexual abuse is so prevalent, especially in the music and entertainment industries,” she says. “While the legislative history and intent seem clear, the language of AB 2777 wasn’t, which has caused confusion and contentious fights in court.” AB 250 “is much clearer,” she says. She expects the longer, two-year window will also help victims seek justice, especially coming after AB 2777, which itself increased awareness of revival laws.

Jessica Ramey Stender, deputy legal director at Equal Rights Advocates, says beyond the bill’s clear stance on perpetrator defendants, she’s also impressed with its more liberal, two-year filing window, saying it would offer potential plaintiffs a much broader chance to go after private businesses purportedly engaging in cover-ups.

“Sexual assault is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can endure, so sexual assault survivors often take a lot of time to even be able to come forward and speak out about what happened to them, let alone take action to hold the perpetrator or any other entity accountable,” she says. The new window proposed by AB 250 could be life-changing for survivors, she says, even as it helps “expose patterns of abuse to help prevent future harm by creating accountability within institutions,” she says.

Taylor says she decided to reveal her identity as AB 250 sits on Newsom’s desk in the hope it might encourage others to step forward as well. She says her silence over the last two decades left her feeling physically and mentally drained. “I feel like I missed out on 20 years of my life because I let it consume me,” she says.

“This is not a money grab stunt. I’m speaking out on my behalf because nobody else will. This is not to gain attention. I don’t want that,” she says. “There’s a person here. And I want everybody to know that it’s okay to come out and speak. It’s okay to talk about it.”

As she sits in her tidy San Diego-area home next to a framed cover of San Diego magazine that named her pet-sitting business a top local pick, Taylor admits she still prefers animals to most humans. But she feels herself getting stronger. She expects to be attacked again online now that she’s going public. She is ready, she says. “Dedicating my life to animals really helped me heal,” she says.

“Before speaking up, I felt like I was lying to myself. Not facing it led to more panic attacks and more anxiety,” she says. “The silence was eating me alive.”