Arnie spared court grilling over groping

Action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be questioned in court as part of a libel case brought by a woman who claims he groped her, a court ruled.

Schwarzenegger is being sued by Hollywood stunt woman Rhonda Miller, who made her claims of assault on the eve of his election as California Governor.

The accusations prompted a fierce counter attack by the Terminator star’s campaign team, as Californians prepared to go to the polls last October.

Ms Miller claims that the attack was an attempt to smear her and was defamatory.

Instead of appearing under oath in the libel case, Schwarzenegger will have to answer written questions by Ms Miller’s lawyers, a judge in Los Angeles rules yesterday.

But Superior Court Judge Robert Hess said the Terminator star may have to go into the witness box later.

“If you’ve got something perhaps a bit more compelling as to why you want to depose him … I think that that ought to be considered,” the judge told lawyers for Ms Miller.

Ms Miller made her allegations in October last year the day before voters went to the polls to elect Schwarzenegger.

She claimed that Schwarzenegger lifted her shirt and groped her breasts when they were on the film sets of Terminator 2 and True Lies.

Ms Miller was one of more than a dozen women who alleged during Schwarzenegger’s campaign that he had behaved inappropriately.

Within hours of hearing Ms Miller’s allegations against Schwarzenegger, his campaign spokesman Sean Walsh sent an e-mail to journalists directing them to the Los Angeles Superior Court Web site.

There, reporters could see criminal records for a Rhonda Miller whose history included prostitution and disorderly conduct. She turned out to be a different Rhonda Miller.

Mr Walsh is also named in the lawsuit.

Ms Miller’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, has claimed that the Schwarzenegger campaign team deliberately misled reporters.

“We’d like to know what did the governor know and when did he know it,” she said.

“Our agenda is to get to the truth of the matter here.”

But a lawyer for Schwarzenegger, Martin Singer, said: “We didn’t put her background in question. She did, when she came forward.”

Schwarzenegger will return his answers to the questions within 10 days.