A year and a half after Paula Abdul first sued Nigel Lythgoe with blockbuster claims of sexual assault, prompting four other women to step forward with similar allegations, the American Idol producer is close to wrapping the last misconduct case still standing against him in Los Angeles County, lawyers confirmed at a hearing Friday.
The final case involves a Jane Doe plaintiff who alleges Lythgoe forcibly groped, kissed, and digitally penetrated her inside his chauffeured vehicle in 2016. Though a Lythgoe rep previously told Rolling Stone that the purported car attack “never occurred,” a lawyer for Lythgoe appeared at the hearing in Santa Monica, California, and said the parties reached a conditional settlement involving an undisclosed payment.
The sticking point over compensation was divulged when L.A. County Superior Court Judge Lisa Sepe-Wiesenfeld asked if “some kind of payment plan” was holding up the request for dismissal.
“There’s a conditional component of this settlement that has yet to be completed,” Jane Doe’s lawyer, Joseph A. Escarez, explained, asking for another six months. “We want to allow sufficient time for that payment to be made.”
Lythgoe’s lawyer, Karen Ephraim, also addressed the settlement, saying that “so far, it’s been partially performed,” and “it’s just a matter of time before it’s fully performed.” The amount of the payment was not discussed, and lawyers on both sides did not respond to requests for comment. A follow-up hearing was set for Feb. 6, 2026.
The Friday hearing followed a week after two other Jane Does dismissed what was left of their lawsuit alleging Lythgoe forcibly groped and kissed them while they were contestants on his 2003 reality game show All American Girl. Lythgoe previously was dismissed as an individual defendant in the case after a judge ruled the women waited too long to sue him personally. On July 14, the women filed to dismiss their lawsuit against the show’s production company. Lawyers for the parties did not respond to requests for comment.
Abdul was first to reach a settlement over her claims Lythgoe sexually harassed and assaulted her multiple times while she was hosting or otherwise working on his reality competition shows, including So You Think You Can Dance. In her lawsuit filed in December 2023, she claimed that during one of the initial seasons of American Idol, Lythgoe “shoved” her against the wall of an elevator, groped her genitals and breasts and “began shoving his tongue down her throat.”
Lythgoe vehemently denied the claims, calling Abdul a “fabulist,” but the production companies behind the shows settled with Abdul in April 2024. Lythgoe reached his own private settlement with Abdul last December, leading to dismissal of the case in January.
The fourth lawsuit against Lythgoe involved a Jane Doe who sued in March 2024 with claims Lythgoe sexually battered her at his home in 2018. That Jane Doe dismissed her case in May after notifying the court that the parties had reached an unconditional settlement.
www.rollingstone.com
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