Blac Chyna’s revenge porn case against Rob Kardashian moves to trial after a judge rejects last-ditch settlement effort

A Los Angeles judge ruled on Thursday that Blac Chyna’s revenge porn lawsuit against Rob Kardashian will move forward on June 20 as opposing attorneys warred over failed settlement negotiations. In June filings, Kardashian’s lawyers claimed that a settlement was tentatively reached when Kardashian and Chyna agreed that he would help her get dropped as a defendant from a separate case. That case was brought by Chyna’s former boyfriend Justin Jones against the pair for disclosure of private information, and according to the filings, the agreement said that Kardashian would settle with Jones without Chyna having to pay for the settlement.

Judge Gregory Alarcon rejected a motion from Kardashian’s team that would have enforced settlement terms negotiated by the lawyers, meaning that the case will now move to trial, unless a last-minute settlement is reached over the weekend. In court on Thursday, Kardashian’s lawyer Todd Eagan claimed that “an email agreement constitutes a signed writing,” arguing that emails between counsel represented a settlement agreement between the parties. Lynne Ciani, Blac Chyna’s lawyer, disagreed and said the email exchanges were “discussions, proposals, let’s get talking.

” “We didn’t sign anything,” Ciani told the court. “If we came up with an amount we agreed on, we wouldn’t be here today. ” Kardashian’s defense has argued that when he posted a series of nude photos of his ex-fiancée in July 2017, he posted the photos with her consent and denied that Chyna, whose legal name is Angela White, “had an expectation of privacy in the images,” according to court filings.

The trial is set to last 2 to 3 days, Alarcon said. On July 5, 2017, Chyna secured a temporary restraining order against Kardashian, in which she said he went on an online revenge porn tirade. Kardashian shared a photo of Chyna in the hospital, calling out what he said in the social media posts was a weight loss surgery.

In the now-deleted posts, he also shared sexually explicit videos of her along with allegations against Chyna around substance abuse and infidelity, sharing private information. Chyna’s revenge porn case seeks damages related to California’s civil code 1708. 85, a Nonconsensual Pornography Law, as well as for disclosure of private information, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress claims.

Cases like Chyna’s can often generate social media narratives that re-traumatize victims of the internet campaigns , Hannah Meropol, a lawyer focused on sexual violence cases told Insider. Meropol said that sexual violence cases in the tech realm typically highlight the “overlap between online and offline abuse. ” “We are always fearful of the truth begin a moving target,” Eagan told the court, accusing Ciani of playing a “game” and pulling a “bait and switch,” pulling out of settlement negotiations after conditions – like resolving the Jones case – were met.

Ciani told the court that two proposals were floated over email, and that neither were cemented as her client wants to go to trial. Eagan added that Kardashian “doesn’t want in one year, five years, ten years for his daughter to read about the fight between his parents that is going to involve sexually explicit images. ” But Chyna “wants her daughter to know it’s not OK to have your nude photos posted online by someone else, whoever it is,” Ciani said.

“We’re ready to go on Monday. ” Toward the end of the hearing, Ciani told the court that “we don’t want monitors here, showing the photos to the gallery. ” Melissa Lerner, one of Kardashian’s attorneys, said she was “confused” about the request because the case was moving to a public trial.

During a separate defamation trial against the Kardashian family in late April and early May, Chyna was brought to tears when a lawyer for the Kardashian-Jenner family presented her with a binder containing her leaked nude photos in court. Ciani had told the court during that trial that the lawyers had an agreement not to publish the photos in any of the cases. .