ORLANDO (CNN) — The judge handling the defamation lawsuit against Casey Anthony has stepped away from the case, leaving open the question of whether the Orlando woman will have to submit to a formal interview by her accuser’s lawyers just days after leaving jail.
Judge Jose Rodriguez, after a 14 minute sidebar, announced without explanation that the case would be assigned to another judge.
A new judge, Lisa Munyon, was assigned to the case later Friday morning. She was expected to hold another hearing Friday afternoon.
Anthony, 25, is being sued in civil court by a woman named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez. Anthony told investigators that was the name of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee’s nanny, and that the woman had taken the girl and disappeared.
Investigators were never able to find evidence such a woman existed, but were able to find Gonzalez, who denied knowing Anthony or her daughter. Gonzalez said Anthony’s accusations turned her life upside down and led to death threats against her and her children.
Two-year-old Caylee’s remains were found in a wooded field not far from the Anthony’s home. Anthony was acquitted July 5 of murder and child neglect charges in her daughter’s death. The jury did convict her of lying to investigators and she is expected to be released from jail on Sunday.
The lawsuit is separate from those charges.
Lawyers for Gonzalez want Anthony to answer their questions in a deposition on Tuesday. In seeking an emergency order forcing her to attend, they wrote that they expect her to leave the Orlando area and change her name, making it impossible to interview her.
After the abbreviated morning hearing, Gonzalez attorney Keither Mitnik said there’s no reason the deposition should not go on as scheduled.
“She’s under subpoena, there’s no protective order,” he said. “She better have her behind in that deposition.”
But Anthony’s attorney in the civil case, Charles Greene, said she can’t be forced to sit for a deposition so soon after a trial that left her “emotionally and mentally exhausted.”
Greene also said he will be in trial on another case that day. If forced to attend the deposition, Greene said Anthony would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
“Consequently, the deposition would be nothing more than yet another media spectacle and frenzy,” Greene wrote in court documents.
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