Between hosting Love Island USA, opening a sandwich shop, and once again resuming her role as Roxie Hart on Broadway, it would seem that Ariana Madix couldn’t have the time or bandwidth for anything else. However, her Vanderpump Rules-induced court battles with Tom Sandoval and Rachel Leviss rage on.
In the latest legal news, Ariana filed an appeal after a judge denied her request to be dismissed from Rachel’s invasion of privacy lawsuit. The suit stems from an intimate video of Rachel that Ariana found on Tom’s phone, setting Scandoval in motion. Rachel contends that Ariana shared the video with others, equally, Ariana denies any wrongdoing.
Ariana’s hoping a higher court will overturn the judge’s decision
Court documents further show that Ariana’s attorneys were appealing a judge’s decision to deny Ariana’s dismissal, according to In Touch.
Ultimately, Ariana told the court, “I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else. To be clear, I only saw the video…in places secluded from others.”
Ariana also requested to be dropped from the suit. However, Rachel blames Ariana for her suffering. Rachel’s declaration in opposition to Ariana’s dismissal read, “It is not just that [Ariana] had discovered the recordings and confronted me about their contents. If that were all that happened, [Ariana] would not have been named in this lawsuit. But that is not all that happened.”
“[Ariana’s] implication that my mental health struggles were brief in duration or minor could not be further from the truth. I was in a state of extreme distress as a result of the events described in the lawsuit.”
Additionally, “In her own sworn testimony, [Ariana] acknowledges that she stole and disseminated them. She distributed the recordings from their original source on Sandoval’s phone to herself and to me at a minimum.”
Finally, at the hearing on July 11, the court sided with Rachel. Consequently, the judge wrote, “Here, the gravamen of [Rachel’s] causes of action against [Ariana] arise from [Ariana’s] alleged theft and distribution of private and sexually explicit recordings of [Rachel]. [Ariana’s] conduct is not protected under the anti-SLAPP statute because the alleged conduct was illegal as a matter of law.”
Vanderpump Rules streams on Peacock.
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