By Andrew Dalton, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --A settlement agreement has been reached in a lawsuit that alleged James Franco intimidated students at an acting and film school he founded into gratuitous and exploitative sexual situations.
A status report jointly filed by the two sides in Los Angeles Superior Court said a settlement had been reached in the class-action suit brought by former students at the now-defunct school, Studio 4, though elements of the lawsuit may live on. The document was filed on Feb. 11, but the settlement has not previously been reported.
Actresses and ex-students Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, who first filed the lawsuit in 2019, have agreed to drop their individual claims under the agreement, according to the court filing. Their lawsuit said Franco pushed his students into performing in increasingly explicit sex scenes on camera in an "orgy type setting" that went far beyond those acceptable on Hollywood film sets.
It alleged that Franco "sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education," and that students were led to believe roles in Franco's films would be available to those who went along.
The lawsuits said the incidents occurred in a master class on sex scenes that Franco taught at Studio 4, which opened in 2014 and closed in 2017.
The two sides had been in discussions on a settlement for several months, and the lawsuits progress had been paused while they talked. Emails to several attorneys for both sides seeking comment on the agreement and more details on the terms were not immediately returned.
In a previous court filing, Franco's attorneys, while praising the #MeToo movement that helped inspire the lawsuit, called its claims "false and inflammatory, legally baseless and brought as a class action with the obvious goal of grabbing as much publicity as possible for attention-hungry Plaintiffs." They pointed out that Tither-Kaplan had previously expressed gratitude for the opportunity to work with Franco.
The lawsuit also names Franco's production company Rabbit Bandini and his partners including Vince Jolivette and Jay Davis as defendants.
The sexual exploitation allegations of other plaintiffs in the class action will be dismissed without prejudice, meaning they may be re-filed, the joint status report said.
Fraud allegations brought by those plaintiffs will be "subjected to limited release," the document says, without further details or explanation.
The document does not reveal how much money may be involved in the deal, which the parties say they will submit for preliminary court approval by March 15.
Before filing the lawsuit, Tither-Kaplan aired her allegations of sexual misconduct against Franco along with other women in the Los Angeles Times after Franco won a Golden Globe Award for "The Disaster Artist" in early 2018, when the wave of the #MeToo movement was sweeping across Hollywood.
In a subsequent interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," Franco called the sexual misconduct stories about him inaccurate, but said, "If I've done something wrong, I will fix it. I have to."
Franco, 42, best known for starring in comedies with Seth Rogen, has generally kept a low-profile since the allegations arose in what had been a highly productive period that culminated in the acclaimed "Disaster Artist."
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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