Andy Cohen and Melissa Gorga could be off the hook in the $30 million lawsuit against them.
Gorga’s ex-business partner Jackie Beard Robinson’s request to reopen her case — in which she accused the duo of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress — was denied by a judge on Friday, Page Six learned via court documents Monday.
The case has been dismissed and was ordered into arbitration early last week, but Robinson filed papers to keep the case going. She was set to face off with Cohen and Gorga at a trial in August before the order was signed.
The Bravo pair was hit with the suit from Robinson in December over comments they made on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” and “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.” Robinson accused them of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress for alleging she “snuck into [their store] Envy in the middle of the night and stole clothing” after her relationship with Gorga went awry.
Robinson claimed in her suit that she met with Gorga in spring 2014 and they decided to open Envy by Melissa Gorga in Montclair, NJ, together in August 2015. She alleges that they signed an agreement naming Robinson the manager of the boutique in October 2015, but their business relationship was severed by Dec. 31, 2016.
In the suit, Robinson claimed that she went to Envy to remove her belongings in “broad daylight” on Jan. 1, 2017 — after alleging that Gorga was “misappropriating over $37,000 from Envy without authorization” — but claims Gorga falsely claimed on TV that she did otherwise and repeated the statements to Cohen.
“Some judges don’t like to be told that they made a mistake,” Robinson’s lawyer Larry Klayman told us of the latest in their case. “This is regrettable as equal justice suffers. This is why we’ve asked for a jury. We’re confident that the arbitrator will send the case back to be tried by a jury.”
Bravo didn’t get back to us.
