STAR WINS DAY IN COURT
Six years after suffering serious injuries during a Langley movie shoot, Gabrielle Carteris celebrates a legal victory
Six years after she was injured in a choking scene at knifepoint on a film set in Langley, a Hollywood actor has finally won her day in court in Vancouver.
Los Angeles actor Gabrielle Carteris, known for playing Andrea Zuckerman on the TV show Beverly Hills 90210, has won a workers’ compensation ruling giving her the right to pursue a lawsuit against a film company in B.C. Supreme Court over injuries she suffered in February 2006.
A trial date has been scheduled for October.
Carteris was the lead female actor in the made for- V movie Past Tense, which was shooting in Langley in February 2006.
She says she suffered a number of injuries, including nerve damage, left-facial paralysis and severe neck, facial, jaw and back pain during a scene that involved a “bad guy” holding her in a headlock and dragging her down a staircase.
The “bad-guy” actor in the choking scene is named as Vancouver’s Adrian Hughes.
Carteris, who was forced to withdraw from the production and was unable to work for a period of time, initially filed suit in the U.S. but a California court found it lacked the jurisdiction and she filed a notice of claim in B.C. Supreme Court.
The defendant film company, Central Myth Pictures, sought to have the case moved out of court and dealt with by Worksafe B.C.
But a ruling released recently by a three-member panel of the WorkSafe B.C. appeal tribunal found that Carteris was an “independent operator,” not a worker, and any injuries she suffered did not arise out of employment within workers’ compensation law.
Robyn Wishart, Carteris’s lawyer, said the ruling gives her client the right to pursue her case in civil court.
“Gabrielle is victorious, I guess is the right word, with respect to not being declared a worker, being in the course of her employment,” Wishart said Thursday.
Carteris says the producers failed to direct the film in a “reasonably safe and prudent” manner and alleges they neglected to employ supervised, trained personnel to plan and enact the choking scene and also failed to ensure the actor playing opposite her — Hughes — received proper training and direction.
The Province was unable to confirm whether the Adrian Hughes named in the suit is the actor of the same name who was charged in 1999 with 10 sex crimes involving eight women in Vancouver but was acquitted on all but one of the charges.
The complainants in the 1999 case all alleged that Hughes forced himself on them.
At the time Carteris filed her lawsuit, a biography for Adrian Hughes on the Internet Movie Database for the movie Past Tense included details that bear a resemblance to the work history of an actor who was sentenced in 1999 to two years in prison for sexual assault.
That Adrian Hughes had dated X-files star Gillian Anderson before the laying of criminal charges. Once his links with Anderson were revealed, tabloid journalists from the U.S. and Britain staked out his home in Kitsilano.