LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Robert De Niro and his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, welcomed their seventh child, a daughter named Gia Virginia in May. The Oscar winner, who made headlines for becoming a father for the seventh time at the age of 79, is back in the spotlight for a lawsuit involving a former employee.
In 2019, the actor and his business, Canal Productions, filed a $6M lawsuit against former assistant and VP Graham Chase Robinson. The Oscar winner charged Robinson with binge-watching 'Friends' while working among other things. The employee responded by bringing a countersuit against both De Niro and Canal, claiming that the production business, where she was vice-president of production and finance, had a hostile work environment for women.
Tiffany Chen's feud with Graham Chase Robinson
Four years later, the legal dispute between the two parties is still far from resolved, and a recently revealed judgment finding, which Puck first reported, revealed not only Robinson's strained connection with De Niro but also her apparent feud with Chen. Records showed that Robinson's abrupt exit was mostly caused by the mounting friction between her and Chen.
During their spat, Chen accused the ex-De Niro employee of unplugging all of the chargers on her side of the bed at the home she shares with the actor. She went beyond as to call their growing uneasy scenario "very 'Single White Female'," referring to the 1992 film about an obsessive roommate.
Later, Robinson accessed a colleague's email account to confirm her fears that Chen had asked that her work be reduced, specifically anything inside De Niro's home, which prompted her to resign.
Robinson's unauthorized access to another employee's email and subsequent departure prompted a probe on behalf of De Niro's attorney, Tom Harvey, who alleged it resulted in the discovery of around five million Delta SkyMiles deposited into a private account. Despite the fact that she was the one who decided to go, there was a protracted legal struggle over her departure and the severance package she had hoped for: two years of her $300,000 a year income and health insurance.
'How dare her!'
According to court records, neither De Niro nor Chen was happy with the current circumstances. Chen texted De Niro, saying, "She thought she was your wife. I saw it from the beginning. I told you." De Niro responded, "The balls, the nerve, the chutzpah, the sense of entitlement: how dare her!" Both parties hurried to sue each other, with the actor filing a complaint in state court first, but when the ex-employee filed her own allegations against De Niro, they found themselves in yet another lengthy dispute about whose case could proceed first. According to reports, a trial will take place in October.
