The photographer who claims Marilyn Manson caused her “fear and anxiety” when he spit and blew his nose on her at a 2019 concert in New Hampshire succeeded Thursday in bringing her civil lawsuit against the disgraced rocker back to life.
A Los Angeles judge had dismissed the assault case in February after the lawyer for plaintiff Susan Fountain failed to appear in court on the date the trial was set to begin.
The lawyer, Jennifer A. Clingo, filed paperwork in March saying she had been suffering from a serious medical issue. The lawyer claimed she simply failed to enter the trial date in her calendar, a mistake that was a first in her career.
In her ruling Thursday, Judge Anne Hwang said Clingo caught her mistake before the six-month deadline to appeal the dismissal. The judge further noted the lawyer has since “reduced her caseload and has prepared for the management of her cases until she fully recovers.”
No one showed up for Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner, at the Thursday afternoon court hearing in Los Angeles.
Fountain initially sued Warner in August 2021, making civil claims of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The veteran photographer said she was working as a camera operator at Warner’s concert at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford, New Hampshire on August 18, 2019 when Warner moved to a section of the stage near where she was standing on a lower platform.
She alleges Warner “crouched down, leaned forward, and brought his face level with (her) camera lens.” He then “expectorated sputum” onto the lens, causing “saliva to be sprayed on Ms. Fountain’s right hand,” her reinstated complaint states.
A short time later, Warner sought Fountain out again, and this time he waged a “second bodily fluid attack,” the complaint states. He “occluded one of his nostrils and expelled bodily fluids right onto Ms. Fountain,” the filing reads.
Shocked and humiliated, Fountain says she rushed to a bathroom and washed her arms and legs, she says. Later, she consulted a physician and underwent medical testing to ensure she had not contracted any communicable diseases, the lawsuit states. (Fountain alleges Warner previously stated on video that he had “swine flu just before he blew his nose on people on the stage.”)
“Plaintiff not only suffered emotional distress from the offensive touching itself, but also from the fear and anxiety that she could have potentially contracted a communicable disease as a result of the exposure to defendant’s bodily fluids. She was forced to undergo medical testing immediately following the incident and several months later to ensure that she had not contracted a serious disease,” Fountain’s filing reads.
Warner, 54, previously pleaded no contest to one count of assault for the nose-blowing caught on video. In September, a New Hampshire judge sentenced him to 20 hours of community service and a $1,400 fine for his “egregious” treatment of Fountain.
“In all the years I’ve worked with people, I’ve never been humiliated or treated the way I was by this defendant. For him to spit on me and blow his nose on me was the most disgusting thing a human being has ever done,” Fountain said in a statement to the criminal court judge.
The police affidavit describing the assault, obtained by the Associated Press, stated Warner spit a “big lougee” on Fountain’s hands before he returned and blew “a significant amount of mucous” out of his nose onto her arms and hands.