Cuba Gooding Jr. has settled a lawsuit accusing him of rape just before the case was set for trial on Tuesday morning. An unidentified woman had accused him of rape in a civil lawsuit filed in 2020.
The trial was set to begin Tuesday in a New York City federal court.
In her lawsuit, the woman claimed the alleged incident occurred in Gooding’s New York City hotel room after meeting him at a Greenwich Village lounge in 2013. He invited her and her friend for drinks at The Mercer Hotel in SoHo, where he was staying, and asked the accuser to come up to his room. According to the suit, the woman insisted on leaving Gooding’s room to meet her friend downstairs when he began to undress in front of her and allegedly blocked the door, pushed her onto the bed and put his hands on her breasts and under her dress without consent. The suit claimed he then allegedly raped the woman vaginally and anally, despite her pleas for him to stop.
Through his attorney Mark Jay Heller, Gooding denied the allegations when the lawsuit was filed. “We never received the complaint, but the allegations are completely false and perjurious,” Heller said in a statement to Variety. “The contentions that he acted inappropriately in the complaint are completely inappropriate and untruthful.”
Popular on Variety
Last year, Gooding pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching in a criminal case that accused him of inappropriately touching three different women at Manhattan nightclubs in 2018 and 2019. As part of his plea deal, Gooding avoided jail time and the conviction was reduced to a violation.
