Marilyn Manson – real name Brian Warner – has been ordered by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to pay $326,956 of Evan Rachel Wood's legal fees.
According to a report by Rolling Stone, Wood's legal fees were racked up during Manson's ongoing defamation lawsuit against her. The financial damage could've been worse to Manson, but Judge Teresa A. Beaudet ordered nearly $60,000 of Wood's full claim not to be paid, saying that some of the lawyers' billed hours were "vague."
Manson filed his defamation lawsuit in March 2022 against Wood and her friend Illma Gore. In the suit, Manson claimed the duo conspired to paint him as "a rapist and abuser," going as far as saying "that Wood and Gore 'provided checklists and scripts to prospective accusers, listing the specific alleged acts of abuse that they should claim against Warner.'" Manson called their acts "malicious falsehoods" and claimed they completely derailed his career.
However, a portion of Manson's lawsuit was gutted in 2023. Beaudet ruled against Manson last March on his claims that Wood had "recruited, coordinated, and pressured" women to come forward with false statements against him using a checklist and a script, as well as the claim that Wood forged an FBI letter. Beaudet also ruled that Wood and accuser Ilma Gore's claims that Manson's 1996 film Groupie featured an underage individual was a "protected activity."
"Based on the foregoing, the Court does not find that Plaintiff has demonstrated a probability of prevailing on his IIED [infliction of emotional distress] claim based on Wood 'recruiting, coordinating, and pressuring multiple women to make false accusations against Warner and to be part of their film project,'" said Beaudet in her ruling at the time.
Wood and Manson have been making headlines for years after Wood publicly named Manson as her abuser in 2020. Wood detailed being mentally and physically tortured by an older man when she was 18-years-old, and most recently claimed Manson "once threatened to fuck her eight-year-old son." You can see the details of her original accusations here.
