Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix has filed an appeal after a judge denied her plea to be dismissed from Raquel Leviss‘ bombshell invasion of privacy lawsuit, In Touch can exclusively report.
According to court documents obtained by In Touch, Ariana’s legal team said they were appealing the decision made on July 11.
Raquel, 29, sued Ariana, 39, and her ex-fling Tom Sandoval.
Last year, Raquel admitted to having an affair with Tom while he was in a longterm relationship with Ariana. Raquel said Tom recorded explicit FaceTime chats they had without her permission. She said Ariana found the videos on Tom’s phones while out with him which led to her breaking up with him.
In the suit, Raquel said Ariana text her the videos after finding them. She believed Ariana had shared or sent the videos to third parties.
Tom and Ariana denied all allegations of wrongdoing in the suit. Ariana denied she ever shared the video with anyone.
“I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else,” Ariana told the court. “To be clear, I only saw the video of [Raquel] … in places secluded from others.”
Ariana demanded all claims against her be dismissed. Raquel opposed the request and argued Ariana was the cause for her suffering.
Raquel wrote in a declaration, “It is not just that [Ariana] had discovered the recordings and confronted me about their contents. If that were all that happened, [Ariana] would not have been named in this lawsuit. But that is not all that happened.”
She added, “[Ariana’s] implication that my mental health struggles were brief in duration or minor could not be further from the truth. I was in a state of extreme distress as a result of the events described in the lawsuit, and I entered treatment in an extremely dark and scary place mentally. My symptoms included severe emotional distress, physical manifestations of such distress, anxiety, shock, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, powerless, sleeplessness, nightmares, and loss of enjoyment of life.”
She added, “In her own sworn testimony, [Ariana] acknowledges that she stole and disseminated them. She distributed the recordings from their original source on Sandoval’s phone to herself and to me at a minimum.” At the hearing on July 11, the court denied Ariana’s motion.
The order read, “Here, the gravamen of [Raquel’s] causes of action against [Ariana] arise from [Ariana’s] alleged theft and distribution of private and sexually explicit recordings of [Raquel]. [Ariana’s] conduct is not protected under the anti-SLAPP statute because the alleged conduct was illegal as a matter of law.”
The judge said, “Here, [Raquel] has conclusively demonstrated [Ariana’s] conduct alleged in the three causes of action was illegal. [Ariana’s] declaration establishes that she accessed [Tom’s] phone without [Tom’s] knowledge and consent. Her declaration indicates that she had previously accessed [Tom’s] phone with his knowledge and consent, but makes no reference to her having [Tom’s] consent to do so on this occasion.”
Ariana is now seeking to overturn the decision at the higher court.
On top of the Raquel lawsuit, Ariana was sued by her former business partner and is still facing off with Tom in a separate lawsuit over a home they purchased.
