Steven Tyler Wins Ruling Dismissing Much of Child Sexual Assault Lawsuit

Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler has won a court ruling dismissing much of a lawsuit from a woman who says he sexually assaulted her as a minor.

Julia Misley claims the rocker “groomed” and “manipulated” her as a teenager decades ago — and that he essentially admitted it by referring to her as his almost “teen bride” in a memoir.

But in a ruling Tuesday (April 28), a Los Angeles judge said that much of the decades-delayed lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations in Massachusetts, where the pair lived during their three-year relationship.

Judge Patricia A. Young ruled that Misley can sue over an alleged sexual encounter during a brief trip to California — where such time limits do not apply thanks to a special sexual abuse law — but dismissed her accusations over the rest of their relationship.

“This is a massive win for Steven Tyler,” said his lawyer, David Long-Daniels, in a statement. “Today, the Court has dismissed with prejudice 99.9% of the claims against Mr. Tyler in this case. The court has decided that only one night, fifty-plus years ago, out of a three year relationship is allowed to remain. We look forward to trying this case on August 31.”

An attorney for Misley did not immediately return a request for comment.

Misley (formerly Holcomb) sued Tyler in 2022, claiming she was the unnamed teenager he referred to in his memoir. 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.

In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Young said that was likely true when it came to Massachusetts — a state where she noted that the age of consent “is, and was at all relevant times, 16.” But even if those claims were valid, the judge said the case had been filed far too late under that state’s statute of limitations.

“Plaintiff’s suit was filed more than 35 years after the alleged acts and more than 35 years after she turned 18,” Judge Young wrote. “To be timely, this suit must have been filed within seven years.”

Those same time restrictions do not apply in California, thanks to that state’s Child Victims Act — a 2020 statute that opened a special “lookback window” in which alleged victims could bring lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. The age of consent in the state was also 18 at the time of Tyler and Misley’s relationship.

“The parties travelled to California on one occasion and engaged in sexual relations here during that trip,” the judge wrote. “The age of consent in California is, and was at all relevant times, 18. Thus, it was against the law for plaintiff and defendant to engage in sexual relations with each other in California because plaintiff was legally incapable of consenting.”

The judge also dismissed accusations relating to conduct in Washington and Oregon, where the pair also briefly traveled, for the same statute-of-limitations reasons.