Robert De Niro’s company told to pay $1.2 million to ex-assistant in gender discrimination case
NEW YORK — A jury said Robert De Niro’s company should pay more than $1.2 million to his former personal assistant after finding his production company engaged in gender discrimination and retaliation.
While the jury found De Niro was not personally liable for the abuse, they said his production company, Canal Productions, should make two payments of $632,142 to his longtime personal assistant, Graham Chase Robinson.
De Niro, who spent three days at the two week trial, including two on the witness stand, has been ensnared in dueling lawsuits with Robinson since she quit in April 2019. He was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read aloud Thursday afternoon.
Robinson, 41, testified that De Niro, 80, and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, teamed up against her to turn a job she once loved into a nightmare. She smiled and hugged all her lawyers after the jury exited the room. She also smiled as the verdict was being delivered.
Robert De Niro’s daughter Drena De Niro said on Instagram that her 19-year-old son, Leandro, was sold fentanyl-laced pills before he died.
De Niro and Chen each testified that Robinson became the problem when her aspirations to move beyond Canal Productions, the De Niro company that employed her, led her to make escalating demands to remain on the job.
On the witness stand, the actor told jurors that he boosted Robinson’s salary to $300,000 from less than $100,000 annually and elevated her title to vice president of production and finance at her request, even though her responsibilities remained largely the same.
When she quit, De Niro said, Robinson stole about $85,000 in airline miles from him, betrayed his trust and violated his unwritten rules to use common sense and always do the right thing.
Robert De Niro and former employee Graham Chase Robinson are embroiled in dueling lawsuits. We break down the he said/she said nature of their complaints.
At times, De Niro acknowledged from the witness stand many of the claims Robinson made to support her $12-million gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit, including that he might have told her that his personal trainer was paid more than her in part because he had a family to support.
He agreed that he had asked her to scratch his back on at least two occasions, dismissing a question about it with: “OK, twice? You got me!”
He admitted that he had berated her, though he disputed ever aiming a profanity her way, saying: “I was never abusive, ever.”
He also denied ever yelling at her, saying that every little thing she was trying to catch him with was nonsense and that, at most, he had raised his voice in her presence but never with disrespect. Then, he looked at her sitting between her lawyers in the well of the courtroom and shouted: “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”
De Niro said Robinson was wrong to take 5 million airline miles from his company’s accounts, but he acknowledged that he had told her that she could take 2 million miles and that there were no strict rules.
Robert De Niro has found himself in a real-life court drama, trading dueling lawsuits with his former assistant after their decade-long working relationship went dreadfully sour.
Robinson testified that she quit her job during an “emotional and mental breakdown” that left her overwhelmed and feeling as if she had “hit rock bottom.”
She said she has suffered from anxiety and depression since quitting and hasn’t worked in four years despite applying for 638 jobs.
“I don’t have a social life,” she said. “I’m so humiliated and embarrassed and feel so judged. I feel so damaged in a way. ... I lost my life. Lost my career. Lost my financial independence. I lost everything.”
De Niro’s lawyers sued Robinson for breach of loyalty and fiduciary duty even before her lawsuit was filed against him in 2019. They sought $6 million in damages, including a return of the 5 million airline miles.
Sofia Haley Marks, 20, was arrested in New York in connection with the death of 19-year-old Leandro De Niro, the grandson of Oscar winner Robert De Niro.
In a closing argument Wednesday, De Niro attorney Richard Schoenstein said the miles that were taken were worth about $85,000. He said jurors could order Robinson to return some of her salary, but, he added: “We’re not looking for you to punish her.”
In his closing, Robinson attorney Brent Hannafan called the two weeks of court proceedings a civil-rights trial and urged jurors to return a verdict “not just for Ms. Robinson, but for all civil-rights litigants.”
De Niro has won two Oscars over the last five decades in films such as “Raging Bull” and “The Deer Hunter.” He’s in the Martin Scorsese film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is in theaters now.
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