A Los Angeles judge has denied Blac Chyna’s bid to redo her testimony against the Kardashians after she became upset and walked off the stand when she was shown a nude photo of herself during cross-examination.
Judge Gregory W. Alarcon made the decision Thursday afternoon to move on to closing arguments at a trial that pits former reality TV star Blac Chyna against Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner.
Chyna’s attorney Lynne Ciani rested the plaintiff’s case Thursday morning. Chyna, 33, is suing the four women, alleging they conspired to cast her as a violent abuser of her former fiancé Rob Kardashian to ruin her television career.
Kardashian attorney David G. Rhodes had already called his key witness, Kris Jenner’s longtime boyfriend Corey Gamble, out of order because of scheduling issues. On Thursday he declined to call any of the Kardashians back to the stand as defense witnesses as he suggested he would do when he skipped cross-examining them after each testified earlier in the trial.
Before closing arguments began, Judge Alarcon dismissed a motion from Chyna’s attorney to allow Chyna to take the stand again because during her testimony last week she was upset after being shown a nude photo of herself that appeared in a restraining order she received against Rob Kardashian in 2017.
The Kardashians’ attorney showed her the document with the photo during his questioning of her. The judge said both sides agreed to all the exhibits, including the restraining order, before the trial.
Ciani said she didn’t agree to it in that form.
‘I emphatically insisted that the naked photo not be presented to the plaintiff,’ she said.
The photo is central to another trial that will begin soon after this one concludes. Chyna is suing Rob Kardashian over it, alleging he posted it online out of retribution.
Kris Jenner, Kylie Jenner and Khloé Kardashian were in the front row of the courtroom Thursday. Kim Kardashian was absent after attending most of the nine-day trial.
Alarcon began reading the jury instructions in the case late Thursday morning. Closing arguments were expected to begin, and be completed, in the afternoon.
Blac Chyna was seen outside of court Thursday as closing arguments began in her case against the Kardashians
, Judge Gregory W. Alarcon dismissed a motion from Chyna’s attorney to allow Chyna to take the stand again because during her testimony she was upset after being shown a nude photo of herself that appeared in a restraining order she received against Rob Kardashian in 2017
Khloe, 37, (far left) and Kim Kardashian, 41 (second from left), and younger sister Kylie Jenner, 24, (second from right) with their mother, family matriarch Kris Jenner, 66, (far right) are all named defendants in the case
Chyna alleges the Kardashians spread false reports of her assaulting him in order to have her ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ spinoff ‘Rob & Chyna’ canceled and ruin her reality TV career.
Ciani wrapped up her case Thursday by showing jurors a video deposition from Frances Berwick, an executive with NBCUniversal, E!’s parent company, show said that a second season of Rob and Chyna didn’t go ahead because ‘their relationship broke down.
‘Their relationship was in a sad place and we didn’t think that it was a good fit for E! which is frothy and escapist, on the lighter side’ Berwick testified.
Berwick said she had not had a conversation with Kris Jenner in which Kris threatened to pull ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ if season two of ‘Rob and Chyna’ went ahead.
Asked why NBCUniversal issued a press release in December 2016 announcing a season, she said that didn’t mean the series had been greenlit but that it was only ‘an indication of what we hoped to do.’
She added that ‘it would not be the first time’ a press release had come out announcing a show that did not go forward later.
Chyna, 33, is suing Rob Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner and sisters Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, alleging they spread false reports of her assaulting him in order to have her ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ spinoff ‘Rob & Chyna’ canceled
Chyna pictured here on Wednesday, is seeking $108million in damages, charging the Kardashians with defamation and ‘intentional interference with contract’ that led to the Keeping Up with the Kardashians spinoff being canceled
Blac Chyna appeared in court Thursday wearing a black check jacket, black leggings and black spike heels.
Khloe Kardashian was also in attendance and arrived wearing a black tuxedo jacket over a silk shirt, black leggings and white sneakers. Her mother, Kris Jenner wore black pants and a black blazer with white piping.
During cross examination last week Rhodes presented Chyna with a copy of the restraining order she filed in 2017 against her ex-fiancé, Rob Kardashian after he allegedly posted ‘revenge porn’ photos of her on social media.
Attached to the restraining order documents were copies of the offending nude pictures which both parties in the case had previously agreed by stipulation would not be shown to the jury.
Jurors did not see them, but Chyna did and allegedly became so ‘upset’ and rattled by the photos, according to Ciani.
Chyna was so distressed that when Rhodes grilled her later about the amount of damages she is seeking, she couldn’t name a dollar figure and only gave vague answers to other questions he asked about damages, her lawyer claimed.
Seeing the pictures ‘derailed’ Chyna’s testimony, Ciani told Judge Alarcon.
‘There was a stipulation that the photos would not be included which was violated intentionally,’ she added.
Ciani asked the judge to order Chyna’s previous testimony about damages to be stricken from the record and that she be allowed to take the witness stand again.
Rhodes denied any wrongdoing, telling the court: ‘The premise that I tricked the witness (Chyna) into seeing those photographs is absurd.’
On Thursday, the judge denied Chyna’s bid to redo her testimony.
E! Network executives paid Chyna $370,000 to film four episodes of KUWTK after season one of Rob and Chyna ended. She is seen at right in one of those episodes with Kim Kardashian
Kourtney Kardashian, Blac Chyna and Kim Kardashian are pictured in the center in a photo Kim posted to her Instagram
Kim, 41, and Khloe Kardashian, 37, and younger sister Kylie Jenner, 24, with their mother, family matriarch Kris Jenner, 66, are all named defendants in the case and are expected to be in court as they were last week.
Chyna, 33, is seeking $108million in damages, charging the Kardashians with defamation and ‘intentional interference with contract’ that led to the Keeping Up with the Kardashians spinoff being canceled.
She claims she the decision resulted in $44million in past lost revenues and $64million in future.
Kris Jenner would be an executive producer on the couple Rob & Chyna which premiered on the E! Network later in September of 2016.
Rob Kardashian testified Wednesday that he feared for his life on a night in 2016 when his then-fiancée Blac Chyna pointed a gun at his head, pulled a phone-charging cable around his neck and repeatedly hit him with a metal rod while under the influence of substances.
‘She strangled me, she put a gun to my head twice, she was on cocaine and alcohol,’ Kardashian said, his voice rising nearly to a shout in a Los Angeles courtroom as Chyna’s attorney Lynne Ciani sought to cast doubt on the attack and its severity.
During an emotional and contentious hour on the stand, Rob Kardashian grew angry when Ciani asked him why photos and video from the days that followed didn’t show any marks on him, despite his testimony that she had hit him repeatedly with a 6-foot metal rod.
‘Did you have as much as a Band-Aid on you?’ the attorney asked.
‘I just told you it didn´t leave a mark on my face!’ Rob Kardashian said. ‘And the gun to my head two different times during the night didn´t leave a mark to my temple!’
E!’s Keeping up with the Kardashian ended its 20-season run in June 2021
Chyna accuses the Kardashians of plotting to cancel her hit reality show Rob & Chyna
Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian watched the testimony from the front row of the gallery, and had no visible reaction.
Chyna testified earlier in the trial that she was never violent toward Rob Kardashian.
She said that on the night of Dec. 14 and the morning of Dec. 15, 2016, the couple had been celebrating the news that ‘Rob & Chyna’ was getting a second season.
The all-night celebration turned into a bitter fight by morning, when he took her phone and shut himself in a closet, looking for evidence of communications with other men, she said.
She testified that earlier in the evening, she had wrapped a phone-charging cord around Rob Kardashian´s neck playfully because he was ignoring her, and picked up a gun he kept around, always unloaded, from a nightstand as a joke.
The chain of events would lead to the end of the relationship, and their show.
Rob Kardashian, 35, the youngest of Kris Jenner’s four children with the late Robert Kardashian, has kept a much lower public profile than his mother and sisters. He was mostly an offscreen character, and only occasionally appeared, on the family’s reality show.
He broke from the pattern in 2016, spending a year in the limelight before it went bad. He and Chyna began dating in January, announced their engagement in April, announced they were having a child together in May, had their own reality show premiere in September, and had a daughter, Dream, in November.
He testified Wednesday that he felt in retrospect that their love was never real, and that he had been at the ‘weakest, worst point’ in his life when their relationship began.
He said the coupling was ‘toxic’ from the start, and that she beat him at least five times during the yearlong relationship.
‘Strangling someone, beating someone, that´s not a family,’ he said. ‘That´s not love to me.’
Rob Kardashian wore a loose-fitting, untucked black dress shirt on the stand. His otherwise dark testimony drew a laugh from most of the courtroom when Ciani suggested that two videos she showed were shot on the same day because he was wearing the same thing.
‘That doesn´t mean anything,’ he said. ‘I wear the same thing every day.’
Rob Kardashian is not a defendant in this trial. Chyna’s allegations against him, stemming from the same incidents, will get a separate trial when this one is done.
Earlier Wednesday, Corey Gamble, a key witness backing up Rob Kardashian’s account of the assault, insisted that he saw Chyna punch him and whip him with a phone-charging cord, as Ciani tried to poke holes in his story.
The original premise for Rob & Chyna focused on the couple’s ‘newly blossoming relationship’ with a light-hearted, romantic comedy feel to it, however, the pair’s romance quickly deteriorated
‘I said that she attacked him,’ testified Gamble, the longtime boyfriend and sometime co-star of ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ matriarch Kris Jenner. ‘What I saw is what I saw.’
Gamble said he rushed to the house the couple was staying in after Kris Jenner got an early morning call from her son, who sounded deeply distressed.
When he arrived, he said, Chyna was holding some sort of metal rod, and threw it down. She rushed toward Rob Kardashian, whipping the phone cord at him then punching him.
‘By the time she got to him, she started hitting him,’ Gamble testified. ‘I was able to get in the middle of them two. I even got hit two or three times.’
Gamble said Chyna threw a chair at Rob Kardashian’s car as he was leaving, then attempted to pick up a table but Gamble stopped her.
During cross-examination, Ciani had Gamble read from a declaration he submitted in the case two years earlier, in which he said he arrived to find Chyna hitting Rob Kardashian with her fists, but made no mention of any of the objects.
‘You didn´t see sufficient to mention the metal rod, the cord or the table?’ Ciani asked.
‘I don´t know why I didn´t include those details,’ Gamble said.