Montreal's Peter Nygard sexual assault case pushed back to 2025

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Lawyers involved in the sexual assault case filed against former fashion mogul Peter Nygaard in a Montreal court have asked for his preliminary hearing to be postponed until January.

Prosecutor Jerome Laflamme made the request to Quebec District Court Judge Pierre Labelle on Friday.

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The preliminary investigation was scheduled to take place over two days at the end of July. According to Laflamme, the witness requested by the defense is not available for dates scheduled for this summer.

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The judge agreed to postpone the hearing to January 28 and 29.

Nygard's defense attorney, Giuseppe Battista, requested that Nygard be able to follow the hearing via video conference due to his health and the fact that he was being held in Toronto at the time.

In November, a Toronto jury found Newgard guilty of sexually assaulting four women. The victims said they were invited to everything from tours to job interviews at Newgard's headquarters in Toronto. The women said they arrived in an upstairs bedroom where they were sexually assaulted.

In the Montreal case, Newgard was charged in 2022 with sexually assaulting and forcibly confining a woman more than two decades ago. The crimes allegedly took place between November 1, 1997 and November 15, 1998.

Nygard, 82, founded a fashion company in Winnipeg in 1967 that eventually became Nygard International. The company produced women's clothing under several brand names and had corporate facilities in both Canada and the United States

Newgard resigned as chairman of the company in February 2020 after the FBI and police raided its New York offices. Since then, the company has filed for bankruptcy and entered receivership.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.

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