A jury has awarded over $1.2 million (NZ$2m) to actor Robert De Niro’s former personal assistant, after finding one of his companies responsible for subjecting her to a toxic work environment.
The jury found that De Niro was not liable for the abuse and said his company, Canal Productions, engaged in gender discrimination and retaliation against former assistant, Graham Chase Robinson.
De Niro spent three days at the two-week trial (including two days on the witness stand) and has been entangled in dueling lawsuits with Robinson since she quit in April 2019. He was not present when the verdict was read.
De Niro’s lawyer, Richard Schoenstein, said the actor’s lawyers could attempt reducing the award. However, he didn’t know if there would be an appeal.
Robinson had testified that 80-year-old De Niro and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, ganged up against her to make a job she once loved became a nightmare.
De Niro and Chen each testified that Robinson started becoming the problem when her aspirations to move beyond Canal Productions, the De Niro company that employed her, made her escalate demands to remain on the job.
Emails, where Chen told De Niro that she thought Robinson was having “imaginary intimacy” with him and wished she was his wife, were presented to jurors. Robinson testified that she did not have a romantic interest in De Niro.
De Niro acknowledged from the witness stand that many of the claims Robinson put forward to support her US$12m (NZ$20m) gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit, including the claim that he may have told her that his personal trainer was paid more than her because he had a family to support.
He admitted that he had asked her to scratch his back on at least two occasions, and agreed that he had berated her but he said he never aimed a profanity her way.
Also, he denied ever yelling at her then looked at her sitting between her lawyers in the courtroom and shouted: “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”
Robinson testified that she resigned during an “emotional and mental breakdown” that left her overwhelmed and feeling like she’d “hit rock bottom”.
She said she had suffered from depression and anxiety since leaving the job and hadn’t worked in four years despite applying for 638 jobs.
Robinson was sued by De Niro’s lawyers over breach of loyalty and fiduciary duty even before her lawsuit was filed against him in 2019. The claims were rejected by a jury.
