Indiana’s former AG says dropped groping suit ends 'odyssey of unfounded allegations'
A civil lawsuit against former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has been dropped. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP, File)
Four women who accused then-Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill of groping them at a 2018 party have dropped their civil lawsuit against him, citing their conclusion that a trial would not make him take responsibility for his alleged actions.
The four plaintiffs decided to drop the suit filed in Marion County, Indiana, court on Sunday, a day before the scheduled start of trial, report the Indianapolis Star and the Associated Press.
Hill said in a statement that the women dismissed the case with no financial settlement and no conditions, according to AP and the Indianapolis Star. The dropped suit ends “this odyssey of unfounded allegations that have dogged me for nearly seven years and have served as the fuel for political and personal attacks against me,” he said.
At the time of the party, one of the plaintiffs was an Indiana lawmaker and the three others were legislative staffers.
The women said in their statement that they decided to drop the suit “to protect themselves from further hardship, disruption to their lives, and trauma that the trial would create.”
The women had claimed Hill touched them inappropriately without consent at a bar party at the end of the legislative session, leading to Hill’s 30-day suspension from law practice in 2020. The Indiana Supreme Court had found that Hill rubbed his hand down one woman’s bare back, touched a second woman’s back, put his arm around a third woman’s waist and pulled her toward him, and touched a fourth woman’s back and buttocks.
Hill was not criminally charged after a special prosecutor concluded in October 2018 that proof of intent was lacking.
The women’s suit alleged the touching amounted to battery and Hill’s denials of the allegations were defamatory. A judge ruled in March that the women could not refer to the ethics case at trial or to Hill’s alleged drunkenness during the bar party.
Hill had claimed any touching that occurred was not intended to be disrespectful or sexual in nature.
Hill lost the Republican primary race for attorney general in 2020. The women no longer have political careers because their allegations damaged their reputations and work relationships, they said in the statement cited by the Indianapolis Star.
