The high-profile legal professionals main the so-called “Actuality Reckoning” are accused of attempting to persuade a actuality star into implicating the marketing campaign’s major goal, the truth big Bravo.
Together with Bravo alum Bethenny Frankel, attorneys Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos noisily launched the campaign final yr, promising to make NBC Common — the corporate that owns Bravo — pay for its allegedly “grotesque and wicked mistreatment” of its stars.
The “Reckoning” seems to have made little headway since then.
Now “Vanderpump Guidelines” star Tom Sandoval tells Web page Six that Geragos and Freedman provided to drop a damning lawsuit towards him if he had been keen to “level the finger at NBC Common” and assist them construct their case that the corporate concocted a storyline that might humiliate their shopper, Sandoval’s ex girlfriend Rachel Leviss.
In 2023, actuality followers had been gripped by the “Scandoval,” by which it was revealed that Sandoval had an affair with co-star Leviss behind the again of his fiancee, Ariana Madix, who additionally starred on “Vanderpump Guidelines.” The dishonest got here to mild when Sandoval’s mobile phone, which contained the incriminating footage and video, fell out of his pocket and was handed to Madix.
Leviss wound up suing Sandoval and Madix in a revenge porn motion, claiming that Sandoval secretly taped her having FaceTime intercourse and that Madix despatched her the footage to disgrace her. (Madix has requested to be set free of the go well with, claiming that she by no means despatched footage to anybody however Leviss, and Sandoval has denied that he recorded her secretly).
Now Sandoval alleges that someday over the summer time of 2024, Freedman and Geragos approached his attorneys Varand Gourjian and Tara Karamians of the Gourjian Regulation Group and provided a quid professional quo.
“My lawyer mentioned to me, ‘They gave you a proposal — I do know you’re not going to take it — however I’ve to carry it to you: in the event you level the finger at NBC Common, they’ll drop the case towards you.”
He tells us that the legal professionals requested if he “could be keen” to say that brokers for NBC Common had “put him as much as” revealing the affair to Madix.
A consultant of Gourjian Regulation Group advised us, “We’re unable to touch upon settlement provides made to our shopper however it’s my impression that, from the outset, Leviss deliberate on making the studios her actual goal, as evidenced by varied passages within the lawsuit they filed [against Sandoval and Madix]. Tom Sandoval has persistently said that the studios had completely nothing to do with the unlucky occasions that unfolded.”
After we requested them concerning the claims, Geragos and Freedman mentioned, “Tom claims he misplaced his telephone. Tom claimed he misplaced his lawyer. Tom did actually lose his movement to dismiss [the revenge porn suit]. It now seems he’s misplaced his thoughts.”
(Sandoval didn’t actually “lose” his lawyer. He fired an lawyer he had employed to work on the revenge porn matter).
Within the 2024 letter promising that the “day of reckoning has arrived” for NBCUniversal — which additionally owns reality-heavy E! — Geragos and Freedman claimed that they had “a major variety of people” prepared to inform their tales.
However they’ve but to file any claims, and, as Web page Six just lately reported, they dropped out of representing “Actual Housewives” star Brandi Glanville in a case towards Bravo.
The legal professionals had despatched a separate letter to NBCUniversal telling the corporate and Bravo figurehead Andy Cohen to organize to be served a go well with over the best way that they had handled Glanville throughout her time on the “Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills” and “Actual Housewives: Final Women Journey,” together with a sexually charged personal message that Cohen despatched to Glanville in 2023. (Cohen has denied wrongdoing, and a third-party investigation cleared him of wrongdoing).
In the meantime, a separate case that former “Actual Housewives of New York” star Leah McSweeney introduced towards Cohen and the community, amongst others, is ongoing. She is being represented by a unique lawyer.
One more case introduced towards NBCUniversal by Caroline Manzo, by which she alleges that she was sexually harassed by Glanville whereas taping for Bravo can be ongoing. She additionally has a unique lawyer. (Glanville has denied wrongdoing).