Matthew Fox's Party Bus Accuser Drops Civil Assault Suit

Former Lost star can breathe a little easier now that a civil complaint against him has been withdrawn

Matthew Fox is off the hook in a civil suit filed in the wake of his party bus incident.

A Cleveland bus driver has dropped a personal injury complaint against the former Lost actor in which she accused him of punching her in the chest and groin during an August 2011 altercation when he tried to board her vehicle.

So what prompted the turnabout?

Heather Bormann had hoped to collect damages over the alleged bust up despite the fact that Cleveland prosecutors opted not to press assault charges against the 45-year-old thesp. Fox subsequently fired back with a countersuit alleging she instigated the fight, not him.

Consequently the woman's attorney, J. Norman Stark, tells E! News he withdrew her suit in April after she failed to pay him the requisite attorneys fees to cover the cost of the considerable resources he would have needed to defend her against Fox's claims.

That would've amounted to an expensive legal battle, one which Bormann was apparently unwilling to wage, remarks the legal eagle, who noted that Bormann stopped responding to his attempts to contact her.

"It would take time and money that she couldn't afford," says Stark. "She probably caved in and that is the end of it."

Because he didn't want to incur legal malpractice for not aggressively seeing the case to the end, Stark asked the court to dismiss him from the case. Subsequently, he says, when the court contacted Bormann and asked her if she wanted to pursue her claim, she declined.

Fox also dropped his countersuit against Bormann. But news of the civil suit's withdrawal could not be more timely.

Just this week, Fox's Lost costar, Dominic Monaghan was asked by a fan of their famed ABC adventure series about getting the erstwhile Jack Shephard on Twitter to which Monaghan tweeted back, "He beats women. No thanks."

While Fox couldn't be reached for comment, a source close to the Vantage Point star denied the beating allegations.

Though Fox is out this legal snafu, he was popped three weeks ago for a DUI in Bend, Ore.

—Reporting by Claudia Rosenbaum