Dallas jury rejects $25 million claim filed by client’s ex-boyfriend
Last week, Russ August & Kabat’s Entertainment Litigation Partner Ashley R. Yeargan and co-counsel Richard A. Rohan, Kelli Hinson, and Thomas S. Conner from Dallas’s Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, L.L.P. won a complete victory for reality television star Camille Grammer in a defamation and malicious prosecution lawsuit filed by her ex-boyfriend after she reported that he assaulted her in 2013.
A jury of five women and three men issued the unanimous verdict on April 24, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas before the Hon. Karen Gren Scholer.
Best known for her role in the popular television series “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Ms. Grammer was sued in 2014 by her ex-boyfriend, Dimitri Charalambopoulos, for defamation and malicious prosecution after she reported that he assaulted her in her hotel room on the morning of October 16, 2013. She counterclaimed for assault and for defamation after Mr. Charalambopoulos claimed in an interview on Access Hollywood that she had fabricated the story of the attack.
The jury completely denied Mr. Charalambopoulos’s claims and rejected his request for more than $25 million in damages against Ms. Grammer. Though Ms. Grammer’s attorneys did not ask for any specific amount of money damages, jurors nevertheless awarded her $1,000 in actual damages arising from the assault and $25 in nominal damages based on their finding that she was defamed by her ex in the TV interview. Jurors also awarded Ms. Grammer an additional $35,000 after determining that Mr. Charalambopoulos had acted with malice and gross negligence. These amounts are in addition to a prior fee award of approximately $120,000 that Ms. Grammer’s counsel secured against Mr. Charalambopoulos in connection with a successful motion to dismiss pursuant to Texas’s version of an anti-SLAPP statute.
The verdict capped nearly five years of contentious litigation between the parties. “We are grateful to the jury for their diligence and careful attention before reaching the right result that completely vindicates our client,” says Mr. Rohan. “We are happy that we were able to help Ms. Grammer finally find justice,” says Ms. Yeargan.