LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A hologram producer accused of sexual harassment by a former employee was today fined another $3,000 by a Los Angeles judge for repeated outbursts in the courtroom and for talking about excluded evidence in front of the jury, bringing the total assessments against the businessman to $5,000 in two days.
“From day one you've been disregarding my orders,” Superior Court Judge Christopher Lui told 51-year-old Alki David. “When you are focused, you are doing a fine job. But when you are not focused, everything falls apart. I'm giving you every accommodation that I can.”
Unlike when he was assessed $2,000 on Wednesday, David told the judge that he would pay the fines.
David continued lashing out at plaintiff Elizabeth Taylor and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, saying he has lost $100 million because of the lawyer's “lies and manipulation” in the case.
“She does not deserve any acclaim for this pathetic effort,” David said.
David also said he will “fight to the death” to protect his companies.
Taylor, a former account executive at David's FilmOnTV, testified that he once picked her up by the ankles and walked her upside down around the office, exposing her underwear. She also said he played an offensive video on her computer and brought a male stripper into the workplace to celebrate a female executive's birthday.
Taylor said she was hired in January 2015 and fired that June. David's other companies include Hologram USA.
Bloom told Lui that a more appropriate way to punish David would be to put limits on the time the wealthy businessman has to put on his defense. She also recommended that because David is representing himself and has the right to cross-examine plaintiff's witnesses, he should be required to write down his questions so that someone else could pose the inquiries to those on the witness stand.
“We have people who are terrified to come in here,” she said.
On Thursday, Taylor, who underwent extensive cross-examination by David, requested a break because she said she felt she was having a panic attack.
Bloom also told the judge that David had vowed Wednesday that he would not pay whatever fines were levied on him.
Taylor, 32, was a witness in the separate trial in April of co- plaintiff Chasity Jones' case against David, in which she was awarded $11 million in compensatory and punitive damages. She alleged she was fired for refusing to have sex with David, who was behind the hologram technology that brought slain rapper Tupac Shakur to Coachella in 2012 and saw the late Michael Jackson moonwalk at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards.
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