A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that alleged Tal and Alon Alexander raped a woman while their brother, Oren, watched.
Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled on Wednesday that the complaint against the brothers was time-barred, arguing the plaintiff missed the window to file a lawsuit over the alleged attack, which occurred in 2012.
Angelica Parker sued the Alexanders in June, weeks after The Real Deal first reported on two lawsuits accusing twin brothers Oren and Alon of raping women in New York more than a decade ago.
Her complaint was the first to name Tal as a defendant, though others have been filed since then. The three brothers were arrested and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in December.
In the complaint, Parker accused Tal and Alon of raping her in an attack allegedly planned and witnessed by Oren. It was filed under an extension of New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which opened a two-year window for survivors to sue their alleged perpetrators regardless of how long ago the incident occurred. The window closes in March.
But Kaplan argued the city’s statute was pre-empted by New York State’s Adult Survivors Act, which opened its own window between November 2022 and November 2023. The state law applied specifically to survivors of sexual violence, while the local law allows claims related to any gender-based violence.
Under Kaplan’s reasoning, Parker would have had to file her lawsuit during the ASA window for it to be considered within the legal range established by the state.
“There’s been a domino effect of so-called accusers who, after reading about a flurry of lawsuits seeking sums of money, have emerged with never-before-heard claims,” Tal’s attorneys, Milton Williams and Deanna Paul, wrote in a statement. “This frivolous lawsuit highlights the opportunism we’ve seen at play and puts an end to it.”
Evan Torgan of the law firm Torgan Cooper + Aaron, who is representing other plaintiffs in some of the civil lawsuits that have been filed against the brothers, pushed back on this.
“They blame the mere six civil litigants for their problems,” Torgan said. “But what about the 42-plus women who have gone to the FBI reporting sexual assaults at their hands?”
The judge’s ruling isn’t based on whether the allegations are true and instead focus solely on his interpretation of the deadline argument made by the Alexander brothers’ attorneys.
“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” Parker’s attorney, Michael Willemin, wrote in a statement. “It is contrary to decisions of other judges, and we expect that it will ultimately be reversed.”
He added that the ruling could affect the outcomes of other lawsuits filed against the Alexanders if the judges presiding over them side with Kaplan.
“The decision is particularly disheartening because it will not only impact our client, but could stand in the way of justice for all victims of gender motivated violence whose claims were revived by the City Council,” Willemin said.
Torgan, who is not involved in Parker’s lawsuit, noted that the New York Court of Appeals will have the last word on how the statute deadlines are interpreted.
“As learned and respected as Judge Kaplan is, he has no ultimate mandatory authority on the interplay of the two statutes,” Torgan said.
Tal is facing three lawsuits over sexual assault, including one complaint filed this week in Miami that claims a woman with the initials E.S. was sexually assaulted by Tal with his brother Oren’s assistance in 2021. The Alexander brothers have denied the allegations.
The latest complaint, filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court on Monday, alleges Tal lured E.S. while giving her a tour of the Oren’s former waterfront home in Miami Beach at the end of a dinner party in January 2021. The woman was visiting Miami from New York and met the Alexanders a few weeks earlier.
A friend of the Alexanders directed the woman to sit next to Tal at dinner, away from the friend she attended the party with. Tal “did not interact” with her during the meal, but once dinner was over, he “began approaching Plaintiff wherever he could find her, urging her to come with him for a tour of Oren’s house” and “becoming more desperate and aggressive with each advance,” the complaint alleges.
Out of excuses, she agreed to tour the house. When he showed her the room he slept in when he was in town, she alleges that Tal pinned her down and violently sexually assaulted her, even as she attempted to fight him off, the complaint alleges. She kept telling Tal to stop, and finally told Tal she was on her period in an attempt to get him off of her.
“Tal then told Plaintiff to ‘prove it,’ got up off her, and moved down to her leg area to try looking up her skirt, apparently to verify whether she was telling the truth about her period,” according to the lawsuit. That’s when she jumped off the bed and ran out of the room.
Last week, a federal judge in New York denied bail appeals for Tal and Alon. Oren, who had his first detention hearing, was also denied bail. They were transferred to New York, where they are being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting their trial. If convicted, they face up to life in prison.
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