A jury ordered Robert De Niro’s company to pay more than $1.2 million to his former personal assistant after concluding that his production company engaged in gender discrimination and retaliation.
While the jury found that De Niro was not personally responsible for the abuse, it ordered his production company, Canal Productions, to make two payments of $632,142 to his longtime personal assistant, Graham Chase Robinson.
De Niro, who was present for three days of the two-week trial, including two days on the witness stand, has been at odds with Robinson since her resignation in April 2019. He was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read Thursday afternoon.
Robinson, 41, testified that De Niro, 80, and his girlfriend Tiffany Chen ganged up on her to turn a job she once loved into a nightmare.
De Niro and Chen testified that Robinson became a problem when her desire to move beyond Canal Productions, De Niro’s company that had hired her, led to her placing ever higher demands on her in order to stay in the job.
Within two days on the witness stand, the actor told jurors that he increased Robinson’s salary from less than $100,000 a year to $300,000 and, at her request, increased his title to vice president of production and finance, even though his Responsibilities remained largely the same.
When he resigned, De Niro said, Robinson stole about $85,000 in airline miles from him, betrayed his trust and violated his unwritten rules of using common sense and always doing the right thing.
At times on the witness stand, De Niro confirmed many of the claims Robinson made in support of her $12 million gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit, including that he may have told her that her personal trainer was paid more than she was, partly because he had a family to support.
He agreed that he had asked her to scratch his back at least twice and dismissed a question about it with “Ok, twice?” You got me!”
He admitted reprimanding her but denied saying foul language against her, saying: “I never acted in an offensive manner.”
He also denied ever yelling at her, arguing that every little detail she tried to demonstrate was nonsense and that at most he had raised his voice in her presence, but never without disrespect. Then he looked at her sitting between her lawyers in the courtroom and shouted, “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!”