The film director Roman Polanski will no longer face a civil trial next year over accusations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl more than five decades ago, after reaching an out-of-court settlement with his accuser that led to the dismissal of the lawsuit, lawyers for both sides said on Wednesday.
The lawsuit against Mr. Polanski, 91, was filed in the Superior Court in Los Angeles County in June 2023 had been scheduled to go to trial in August 2025. The terms of the settlement were not immediately disclosed.
In the lawsuit, the accuser, identified only as Jane Doe, says she met Mr. Polanski at a party in 1973, when she was a minor. Months later, she met him a second time at his home in Benedict Canyon, where he gave her two shots of tequila, the lawsuit says. Later they went to dinner in Los Angeles, where she was given more alcohol and eventually became sick, before going back to his house, the lawsuit says.
“Plaintiff remembers waking up in Defendant’s bed with him lying in the bed next to her,” the lawsuit reads. “He told her that he wanted to have sex with her.” The plaintiff, though groggy, told him, “No” and, “Please don’t do this,” the lawsuit says. He ignored her, removed her clothes, and “proceeded to rape her causing her tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering,” according to the suit.
Mr. Polanski denied the allegations when the suit was filed.
Mr. Polanski’s lawyer, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, said in a statement that the case was settled over the summer and that the lawsuit had been formally dismissed. He declined to disclose details of the settlement.
Gloria Allred, the lawyer for the woman, confirmed the settlement in a brief statement, saying that the terms had been “agreed to by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”
In 2017, the plaintiff, who was identified at the time only as Robin, appeared with Ms. Allred at a news conference in Los Angeles. She said that she was 16 at the time of the assault and that she told one friend about it the day after it happened. But otherwise, she said, she kept the story to herself for more than four decades.
Mr. Polanski has faced several lawsuits over the years accusing him of sexual assault. He has repeatedly denied the accusations.
In 1977, Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer when she was 13. He fled to his native France in 1978 before his sentencing and remains wanted in the United States over the case. France, however, does not extradite its citizens.
Ms. Geimer has spoken out about the case in recent years and, in 2017, she asked the courts to drop it “out of mercy for myself.” She also spoke publicly in Polanski’s defense.
Earlier this year, a French court ruled that Mr. Polanski had not defamed the British actress Charlotte Lewis, who had accused him of rape, by claiming in an interview in 2019 that she was a liar.
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