On Thursday, a jury granted Robert De Niro’s former personal assistant more than $1.2 million in a verdict that held his personal needs management company accountable for gender discrimination and retaliation. The accusations arose after the assistant claimed that the actor had subjected her to a toxic work environment.
Although the jury cleared De Niro of personal liability for the alleged abuse, they ruled that his company, Canal Productions, should make two payments totaling $632,142 to the former assistant, Graham Chase Robinson.
Throughout the two-week trial, De Niro, 80, who spent three days, including two on the witness stand, has been embroiled in legal battles with Robinson since her resignation in April 2019. Notably, De Niro was absent from the courtroom when the verdict was announced on Thursday afternoon.
Robinson, aged 41, testified that De Niro and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, collaborated to transform her once enjoyable job into a nightmare. After the jury’s decision, she expressed her satisfaction by smiling and embracing her legal team.
Following the verdict, De Niro’s attorney, Richard Schoenstein, stated outside the court that they would seek to diminish the awarded amount through post-trial motions.
During the trial, both De Niro and Chen testified that Robinson became problematic when her ambitions to move beyond Canal Productions led to escalating demands to retain her position. In his testimony spanning two days, De Niro informed the jurors that he had increased Robinson’s salary from less than $100,000 annually to $300,000 and granted her the title of vice president of production and finance, despite her responsibilities remaining largely unchanged.
