A jury has ordered Robert De Niro’s company to pay more than 1.2 million dollars 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 ordered his production company, Canal Productions, to make two payments of 632,142 dollars to his long-time personal assistant, Graham Chase Robinson.
De Niro, who spent three days at the two week-trial, including two in the witness box, has been ensnared in duelling lawsuits with Ms Robinson since she quit in April 2019. He was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read aloud on Thursday afternoon.
Ms Robinson, 41, said De Niro, 80, and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, teamed up against her to turn a job she once loved into a nightmare.
De Niro and Ms Chen each said during evidence that Ms 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 in the job.
In two days in the witness box, the actor told jurors that he boosted Ms Robinson’s salary from less than 100,000 dollars annually to 300,000 dollars 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, Ms Robinson stole about 85,000 dollars in airline miles from him, betrayed his trust and violated his unwritten rules to use common sense and always do the right thing.
At times, De Niro acknowledged from the witness box many of the claims Ms Robinson made to support her 12 million dollar gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit, including that he may have told her that his personal trainer was paid more than her in part because he had a family to support.
He agreed 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 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 Ms Robinson was wrong to take 5 million airline miles from his company’s accounts, but he acknowledged that he had told her she could take 2 million miles and that there were no strict rules.
Ms Robinson said she quit her job during an “emotional and mental breakdown” that left her overwhelmed and feeling like she had “hit rock bottom”.
She said she has suffered from anxiety and depression since quitting and has not 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 Ms Robinson for breach of loyalty and fiduciary duty even before her lawsuit was filed against him in 2019. They sought 6 million dollars in damages, including a return of the 5 million airline miles.
In a closing argument on Wednesday, De Niro lawyer Richard Schoenstein said the miles that were taken were worth about 85,000 dollars. He said jurors could order Ms Robinson to return some of her salary, but, he added: “We’re not looking for you to punish her.”
In his closing, Ms Robinson’s lawyer 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 past five decades in films such as Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter. He is in the Martin Scorsese film Killers Of The Flower Moon that is in cinemas now.
