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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Attorneys for Rachel Leviss state in new court papers that Tom Sandoval's motion to dismiss most claims brought by former "Vanderpump Rules" cast member star Rachel Leviss, who alleges he and Ariana Madix produced and distributed revenge porn involving the plaintiff, is "offensive, legally meritless and wholly unpersuasive."
In court papers brought Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Leviss' lawyers urge judge Daniel M. Crowley to deny Sandoval's motion and allow Leviss' claims for eavesdropping, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress to proceed. The motion, scheduled to be heard May 24, does not challenge Leviss' revenge porn claim.
The 40-year-old Sandoval's lawyers also are asking that the 29-year- old Leviss' request for punitive damages be denied.
"These arguments are offensive, legally meritless and wholly unpersuasive," Leviss' attorneys state in their court papers. "It is beyond reasonable dispute that Sandoval's conduct ... gives rise to liability under California law.
In their dismissal motion, Sandoval's attorneys argue that after "thrusting the vicissitudes of her life into the limelight for ongoing public consumption and critique from 2016-23, Leviss has now filed the instant action against Sandoval and Madix," who is Sandoval's 38-year-old former girlfriend.
In reality, Leviss' complaint is a "thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim instead of the other woman while denigrating her former friend Madix as a scorned woman and her former paramour Sandoval as predatory," Sandoval's lawyers further state in their court papers.
Leviss' request for punitive damages consist of allegations that are unsupported by evidence and "devoid of sufficient facts to evidence (Sandoval's) conduct as being intentional, willful or fraudulent, let alone despicable," Sandoval's lawyers argue in their pleadings.
According to Leviss' suit filed Feb. 29, she was "a victim of the predatory and dishonest behavior of an older man who recorded sexually explicit videos of her without her knowledge or consent, which were then distributed, disseminated and discussed publicly by a scorned woman seeking vengeance, catalyzing the scandal."
"Sandoval's irrelevant characterization of the affair itself as sordid and salacious, less than clandestine and open and ostentatious does not change the fact that ... the communications in question were confidential and that Sandoval recorded them intentionally and without the consent of all parties," Leviss' attorneys contend in their court papers.
Leviss had every reason to believe and did believe that her private communications with her secret lover would be confined to the parties thereto and did not reasonably expect that the communications may be overheard or recorded," Leviss' lawyers further argue in their pleadings.
Leviss, who was "humiliated and villainized for public consumption," is a shell of her former self and both her career prospects and reputation have been damaged, the suit alleges.