Lawyers clash over whether Weinstein case is sex trafficking

A lawyer for an aspiring actress who claims she was groped by one-time movie mogul Harvey Weinstein called the disgraced producer a “pimp in a tuxedo” in arguments in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday over whether he can be sued under sex-trafficking laws.

British actress Kadian Noble, 31, was lured to Weinstein’s hotel room at the Cannes film festival in France by his intimating that it would help her get a role in a future project, and then was coerced into groping on his couch and other sexual contact in a bathroom, said lawyer Jeff Berman.

Those events, Berman told U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet, met the requirements of a “commercial sex act” that can trigger liability under civil provisions of the federal sex trafficking statute.

“She complies with sex acts as part of a quid pro quo,” Berman told Sweet. “He didn’t give her the film role eventually. She complies because she’s expecting this film role.”

Noble’s suit, one of dozens of allegations of sexual abuse lodged against Weinstein last year, was filed as a sex-trafficking complaint because that extends the time for a lawsuit and allows a U.S. court to hear a case about an incident in France.

But Weinstein’s lawyer, who argued at the Wednesday hearing that Sweet should dismiss the complaint, said the analogy of Weinstein to a “pimp” or a sex trafficker applied the law too broadly.

“It cannot be the case that every time a woman has sex with a more powerful man in an effort to advance her career and things don’t go the way she likes it somehow makes her a sex-trafficking victim,” said Phyllis Kupferstein.

Kupferstein also said Weinstein’s encounter with Noble did not involve any sexual penetration constituting a “sex act,” and his promises that Noble would be “taken care of” were too vague to represent a promise of a film role or a “thing of value” that created a commercial transaction.

“A promise of a film role has no value,” she said. “An actual film role has value. There was no exchange of anything of value in return for a sex act.”

Sweet told both lawyers that he couldn’t find any previous cases providing guidance on the use of trafficking laws in similar situations, and reserved ruling.

Berman told reporters after the hearing that the episode had left Kadian a wreck with no hope until other women who had similar experiences with Weinstein spoke out last year, and said she has given up any thought of an acting career.

“She was hospitalized, very depressed,” he said. “She was really devastated by these events.”

Weinstein issued a statement denying allegations of “nonconsensual sex” when Noble filed her suit last year.

He is under investigation by the NYPD for possible criminal assaults, and has been sued by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for a pattern of civil rights violations. He was also recently sued by actress Ashley Judd. He left his movie company, which has filed for bankruptcy.