LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California judge on Friday largely rejected a bid by reality television star Tom Sandoval to pare down a lawsuit filed against him by fellow "Vanderpump Rules" cast member Rachel Leviss.
Leviss and Sandoval were at one point having a secret relationship with each other — a storyline which catapulted the two LA residents into infamy.
Leviss sued Sandoval earlier this year for eavesdropping and invasion of privacy, following an incident last year in which Sandoval's longtime girlfriend, Ariana Madix, discovered secretly recorded and sexually explicit videos on Sandoval's phone showing Leviss "in a state of undress and masturbating." Leviss also sued Madix for revenge porn. Sandoval filed a demurrer, arguing that he had "merely saved private copies of the videos that Leviss had filmed and shared with him."
"Leviss made the videos of herself and intentionally shared the videos with the defendant," Sandoval's attorney, Tiffany Krog, said at a hearing on Friday. "It's not eavesdropping."
Bryan Freedman, Leviss' attorney, said that argument misstated the nature of his client's legal claims. Leviss, he said, was claiming that Sandoval surreptitiously recorded FaceTime calls between the two of them.
"This was a FaceTime conversation, and he was secretly recording them for his own personal and sexual gratification," Freedman told the judge.
Judge Daniel Crowley sustained the demurrer as to the suit's intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, finding that Sandoval had not acted "with the intention of inflicting injury to" Leviss. But he overruled the rest of the demurrer, allowing the case overall to proceed.
"It strains credulity to imagine that secretly recording someone would not be an invasion of privacy," Freedman said after the hearing. "That feels like the very definition of invasion of privacy."
Airing on Bravo, "Vanderpump Rules" follows the trials and tribulations of the employees of bars and restaurants owned by Lisa Vanderpump, herself a former cast member of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills." The show's notoriety was boosted into the stratosphere by Sandoval and Leviss' affair, which has been dubbed "Scandoval" by the tabloids.
Sandoval, an actor, musician, and a bartender at SUR Restaurant & Lounge, was for ten years in a relationship with Ariana Madix, another SUR employee and "Vanderpump Rules" cast member. Then, Madix discovered that Sandoval had been cheating on her with Leviss.
The scandal received intense coverage in both the media and on "Vanderpump Rules." Much of the audience was sympathetic to Madix and enraged at Sandoval and Leviss. The pair were portrayed as villains and received a torrent of hatred on social media.
Leviss' lawsuit stems from the way in which Madix discovered the secret relationship. Sandoval was playing a show with his cover band, Tom Sandoval & the Most Extras, when his phone fell from his pocket, according to Leviss' complaint. Madix searched through it and discovered a number of sexually explicit videos of Leviss, the lawsuit states.
"Given Sandoval’s apparent practice of secretly recording their video calls, Leviss has every reason to assume there are additional illicit videos and/or photographs of her that she has not yet seen," Leviss' complaint reads.
An apoplectic Madix texted two of the videos to herself and then to Leviss, along with a message: "you are DEAD TO ME." The videos have not been publicly disseminated — though gossip outlet TMZ did apparently obtain at least one of them, describing it in a news story.
Leviss in February sued Madix for revenge porn, basing those claims on a fairly new California law that has yet to be tested in the appellate courts.
She also sued Sandoval for eavesdropping and invasion of privacy, saying the videos were made by Sandoval without her consent before being "distributed, disseminated, and discussed publicly by a scorned woman seeking vengeance." Though the suit does not name Bravo as a defendant — at least not yet — Leviss does make a number of allegations about the Housewives and Vanderpump network, arguing Bravo exploited her pain even as she was forced to check herself into a mental health facility for three months.
In an April court filing, Sandoval fired back at his former lover, describing Leviss' lawsuit as "a thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim" in the affair. With the suit, Leviss was "denigrating her former friend Madix as a 'scorned woman' and her former paramour Sandoval as 'predatory,'" he argued.
Leviss is represented by lawyers Freedman and Mark Geragos.
The two lawyers have filed a number of lawsuits against Bravo and the makers of another reality show, "Love is Blind." The pair last year sent Bravo parent company NBC an ominous letter calling out what they described as a culture of abuse.
"NBC has a pattern and practice of grotesque and depraved mistreatment of the reality stars and crewmembers on whose account its coffers swell," the attorneys wrote in the letter. "Please be advised that the day of reckoning has arrived."
Further adding to the tabloid-fodder nature of the legal proceedings, one of Sandoval's lawyers is none other than Matthew Geragos, Mark's brother. Neither Geragos appeared in court on Friday.
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