FKA Twigs Fights To Medical & Financial Information Private In Assault Lawsuit Against Ex-Shia LaBeouf

In a highly contentious legal battle, attorneys for British singer-songwriter FKA Twigs have fiercely objected to Shia LaBeouf’s demands for her complete medical history as their October trial date approaches. 

The case, filed in December 2020, alleges that LaBeouf sexually and physically assaulted and battered Twigs while they were in a relationship between the years of 2018 and 2019.

Twigs’ legal team has argued that LaBeouf’s attorneys are “improperly seeking Plaintiff’s private financial and medical information that has no bearing on the issues in this case,” according to court documents. The singer, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, has already submitted to a psychotherapy exam and provided over 1,300 pages of documents for the upcoming trial.

Twigs’ lawyers contend that LaBeouf’s team seeks “the entirety of Plaintiff’s medical history, going well beyond the injuries that are actually at issue” without any justification for why her “medical history, unrelated to her emotional distress or the condition transmitted to her by [LaBeouf]” is necessary. They also argue that the requests are “overbroad and burdensome” and that the defendant is not entitled to this “highly private information.”

In an interview with The New York Times, published concurrently with the filing of her lawsuit, Twigs described her relationship with LaBeouf as “the worst thing I’ve ever been through in the whole of my life.” They alleged that he knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease.

Twigs’ attorney, Bryan Freedman, has refuted the notion that Twigs’ professional success should diminish the severity of the trauma she has endured and stated, “Any suggestion that FKA Twigs’ emotional distress should be discounted because of any career success is preposterous and discounts the idea that victims should have hope for the future. Logically, without the trauma that she has suffered, I can only imagine the level of success she would have achieved by now.”

At the time the lawsuit was filed, LaBeouf acknowledged through a series of emails to The New York Times that he had a history of “hurting the people closest” to him and stated that “many” of the allegations were not true, but said he owed Twigs and other women “the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.”

The high-stakes legal battle is set to unfold in court on October 14, as Twigs’ team fiercely protects her privacy and personal information in the face of LaBeouf’s expansive discovery requests.