A woman has sued Duane “Dog” Chapman, alleging that a member of the TV bounty hunter’s team threw her down a flight of stairs and broke her back while her boyfriend was being apprehended.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Audrey Emery and seeks unspecified damages. Two other plaintiffs, including the boyfriend, seek damages from the bounty-hunting team in the same lawsuit.
Emery accuses an associate of Duane Chapman of injuring her at her Pearl City apartment on Jan. 26, 2005 in the course of arresting Stuart Calistro and filming for the A&E reality series “Dog the Bounty Hunter.”
“They’re filming this TV segment and she is upset because you have these thugs breaking into her apartment and she doesn’t want them in there, so they decide the convenient thing is to throw her down the stairs,” Emery’s attorney Richard Turbin said Thursday.
Duane Chapman and his wife, Beth, released a statement saying their family has become a “target of frivolous lawsuits and publicity seeking attorneys.”
“We pride ourselves in making sure that everything we do is within the bounds of the law and we are confident that we did so in this case,” he said. “The videotape in the television show itself demonstrates that the charges against us are baseless.”
The 53-year-old reality star, currently free on $300,000 bond, has been charged under Mexican law with “deprivation of liberty” for his June 2003 capture of fugitive convicted rapist Andrew Luster, the Max Factor heir, in Puerto Vallarta.
His publicist said a decision is expected by Tuesday.