A judge scheduled a new trial date in the long-running child sexual lawsuit against Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and said he was open to revisiting the scope of the case.
In a Monday (Nov. 9) court ruling, obtained by Billboard, the judge set a May 2027 trial for Julia Misley’s claims that Tyler sexually “groomed” her as a teenager in the 1970s — and then essentially admitted it by writing in a memoir that he “almost took a teen bride.” The order came from Los Angeles Judge Lawrence P. Riff, the sixth judge who has taken on the slow-moving civil case since 2022.
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A previous September 2026 trial date was abruptly canceled less than two weeks beforehand after the last judge, Patricia Young, realized that she’d accidentally discussed it with a fellow jurist who had once been assigned to the case. On Monday, Judge Riff said he’ll now “consider” any requests to void Judge Young’s pretrial rulings.
Revisiting those rulings could potentially result in a big win for Misley, who had her claims substantially narrowed by Judge Young earlier this year. That judge decided in April that the bulk of Misley’s decades-old case was barred by the statute of limitations in Massachusetts, where Misley and Tyler lived together in a Boston apartment for three years starting when she was 16 years old. Under that ruling, Misley was only going to be allowed to go to trial over a single sexual encounter during a brief trip she and Tyler took to California.
It remains to be seen whether Judge Riff will actually change that ruling; at this point he’s merely said he’s open to taking a second look, and Tyler will surely fight to keep the case narrow. In a court filing earlier this month, Tyler’s lawyers said the last judge’s decisions were “legally sound” and criticized Misley for “boldly seeking to turn Judge Young’s recusal into settlement leverage for herself.”
A source close to Tyler told Billboard on Monday that they “respect the process and remain confident that the truth will come out at trial.” Misley’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.
Misley (formerly Holcomb) claims in the case that she and Tyler began a nonconsensual sexual relationship after meeting at an Aerosmith concert in 1973, when she was 16 years old. Misley moved to Boston with the rocker and alleges he at one point became her legal guardian.
The lawsuit claims Tyler admitted much of this himself in his 2011 memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, in which the singer wrote, “I was so in love I almost took a teen bride.” Another passage in the book reads, “I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state.”
Tyler maintains that his relationship with Misley was fully mutual and consensual. As his lawyers have pointed out repeatedly in the case, 16 is the age of consent in Massachusetts.
