new york – A jury on Thursday ordered Robert De Niro’s company to pay more than $1.2 million to his former personal assistant after finding his production company involved. Gender discrimination and retaliation.
While the jury found De Niro not personally responsible for the abuse, they ordered the production company Canal Productions to pay his longtime personal assistant, Graham Chase Robinson, two dollars, $632,142.
She has spent three days of the two-week trial, including two on the witness stand, in court proceedings since breaking up with Robinson in April 2019. afternoon.
Robinson, 41, testified that De Niro, 80, and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, teamed up with her to turn her once-loved career into a nightmare.
De Niro and Chen each testified that Robinson’s desire to leave Canal Productions led to growing demands that she pursue a career outside of De Niro’s company.
David D. Delgado / Getty Images
The actor told jurors on the witness stand that in two days he raised Robinson’s salary from less than $100,000 to $300,000 annually and, at her request, promoted her to president of product and finance, though her responsibilities remained the same.
When she stops, De Niro, Robinson steals $85,000 in airline miles, betrays his trust and breaks his unwritten rules to use common sense and always do the right thing.
At times, De Niro admitted many of the claims Robinson made to support a $12 million gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit. to help.
Agreeing that he asked her to scratch his back at least twice, he dismissed the question about it: “Okay, twice? You got me!”
“I was not abusive at all,” he said, despite arguing that he was abusive in her way.
He said he never yelled at her, saying every little thing she was trying to catch him. It was pointless. And at best, he raised his voice in her presence but never respectfully. Then she sat in the courtroom pit between her lawyers and looked up and shouted, “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”
De Niro said it was wrong for Robinson to take 5 million airline miles from his account, but he told her she could take 2 million miles and there were no hard and fast rules.
Robinson said she quit her job due to an “emotional and mental breakdown” that left her overwhelmed and feeling like she was “hitting rock bottom.”
She said she suffered from anxiety and depression after her layoff and applied for 638 jobs, but had not held a job in four years.
“I don’t have a social life,” she said. “I’m so humiliated and ashamed and so judged. I’m so hurt in some way… I lost my life. I lost my job. I lost my financial freedom. I lost everything.”
De Niro’s lawyers sued Robinson for breach of fiduciary and fiduciary duty even before her 2019 lawsuit against him. They sought $6 million in damages, including the return of 5 million airline miles.
In closing arguments Wednesday, De Niro’s attorney, Richard Schoenstein, said the miles taken were worth about $85,000. He said a jury could order Robinson to pay back some of her wages, but added, “We don’t want to punish her.”
In closing, Robinson’s attorney, Brent Hanafan, called the two weeks of court hearings a civil rights trial and urged jurors to return a verdict “not just for Ms. Robinson, but for all civil rights activists.”
De Niro has won two Oscars in the past five decades for films like “Raging Bull” and “Hunter Hunter.” He’s in the Martin Scorsese movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” now in theaters.