Blac Chyna’s bid to force the E! network to reveal how much it earned in profits from her short-lived reality show, Rob & Chyna, has been tossed out by a judge, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The Los Angeles judge presiding over the the 33 year-old’s lawsuit against the Kardashian clan has quashed her request to subpoena the network to open up its books on the spin-off series during its seven-episode run in 2016.
Chyna’s attorney, Lynne Ciani, had argued that details surrounding the profits E! reaped from the series is vital to her claim for damages against the billionaire family.
But E! attorney Rochelle Wilcox filed an opposing motion, telling Judge Gregory Alarcon Monday that such information is a ‘privileged trade secret’ that should not be disclosed in public.
Judge Alarcon granted the network’s motion Tuesday in a written ruling after ‘finding that plaintiff (Chyna) has failed to show good cause to seek trade secrets.’
Chyna, who shares a daughter with Rob Kardashian, 35, is suing the Kardashian family for $108million, accusing them of defamation and ‘intentional interference with contract’ that led to her show being canceled.
Wednesday marks the eighth day trial in which sisters Kim, 41, Khloe, 37, and Kylie Jenner, 24, and their mother, family matriarch Kris Jenner, 66, are all named defendants.
An LA judge on Tuesday ruled against Blac Chyna’s motion demanding E! reveal how much it earned in profits from her short-lived reality show Rob & Chyna, after she ‘failed to show good cause to seek trade secrets’. She is pictured leaving court Tuesday
Chyna accuses the Kardashians of plotting to cancel her hit reality show Rob & Chyna
During the seventh day of proceedings Tuesday, Kim Kardashian admitted in court that she resented having to film episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians with Chyna after she allegedly beat her brother with a metal rod.
The E! Network, which aired both reality series, paid Chyna $370,000 to film four episodes of KUWTK after season one of Rob & Chyna show ended.
But that deal was inked without consulting the Kardashians, said Kim, who protested in an email that at E!: ‘Nobody listens to us…No one respects us’, the court heard.
She then reportedly urged her sisters in a text to ‘get on the phone today’ with E! executives following the December 2016 fight.
‘I was upset that Rob was so emotional and upset,’ the reality star explained to jurors at Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday.
‘I remember trying to be supportive of my brother – he was being so emotional.
‘It’s all such a blur,’ she added, remembering that her brother, Rob, ‘looked red and puffy and exhausted and drained.’
‘It was our show and she’s not a family member.’
Kim appeared in court in a gray pin-striped suit with her hair pulled back into a bun, looking very fresh despite a recent trip to Washington D.C. and Orlando, Florida that made her miss court the day before.
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
Court filings obtained by DailyMail.com reveal a judge granted E!’s motion to quash Chyna’s bid
Chyna, 33, is seeking $108million in damages, charging the Kardashians with defamation and ‘intentional interference with contracts’ that led her to lose money on TV, personal appearances and social media ‘influencing’
In court on Tuesday, Chyna’s attorney, Lynne Ciani, grilled Kim about the intent of the text message she sent to her sisters – and whether they ever had a family meeting about canceling the second season of Rob & Chyna.
The lawyer pointed to an email from Kim to the producers of KUWTK in which she talked of taking a break from the show and warning them that ‘you’ll lose the rest of the Kardashians and Jenners’ if they continued filming with Chyna.
‘You already got Chyna off her show (Rob & Chyna) and now you didn’t want her on your show (KUWTK) either?,’ Ciani asked the reality star.
‘I’m just saying this is our show,’ Kim responded. ‘We have the discretion of what we’re going to film content wise.
‘Why would you want to put my brother in this situation if he’s going to end up crying and she’s (Chyna) just going to show up to film and not be with him?
‘Why would we film with her on our show? It was our show and she’s not a family member.’
Kim also told the lawyer at least four times that she did not remember why she sent the urgent text to her sisters.
Also on Tuesday, Kim’s sister, Khloe, testified that she, too, was worried about ‘something crazy happening down the line’ if there were a second season of the KUWTK spin-off.
She confirmed Kim’s comments about the metal rod, saying: ‘I know it was a metal rod. I saw red indentations on my brother’s neck.’
E! Network executives paid Chyna $370,000 to film four episodes of KUWTK after season one of Rob & Chyna ended. She is seen at right in one of those episodes with Kim Kardashian
Before things went south, Chyna had a friendly relationship with the Kardashian sisters and was seen attending social events with the family
But, she said, the family had ‘no control’ of whether E! would cancel Chyna’s contract – a claim later confirmed by Adam Stotsky, the former president of the network.
‘With all due respect to [the Kardashians], they do not have the authority to kill Rob & Chyna, only E! has the power to do that,’ Stotsky said in court.
And when the Kardashians’ attorney, Michael Rhodes asked him: ‘Did the Kardashians do anything whatsoever to cause you to say, “No season 2,” Stotsky replied: ‘No.’
Instead, he said, the original premise for Rob & Chyna was the couple’s ‘newly blossoming relationship’ with a light-hearted, romantic comedy feel to it.
But when that relationship started ‘falling apart’ – with Rob and Chyna first fighting, then not even speaking to one another, he said, ‘it was kind of gross.’
Asked about the TV ratings for Rob & Chyna, Stotsky said: ‘It was a top performer – it did very well.’
When Rhodes questioned Stotsky about the defamation part of Chyna’s lawsuit in which she alleged that the Kardashians ‘made false claims about her’ to E!, he told the court the family told him nothing that ‘influenced our decisions about Rob & Chyna.
And when Rhodes asked him about the part of Chyna’s lawsuit in which she accuses the Kardashians of ‘interfering’ with her contract, Stotsky told him: ‘There was nothing your clients did that affected our view of Chyna’s contract.’
American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest – an executive producer on both Keeping up with the Kardashians and and Rob & Chyna – was the next witness to be called upon.
Seacrest was not in court today so a video deposition he gave in May 2019 was played to the jury.
But as it turned out, the deposition shed no new light on the case since he answered ‘I can’t remember’ or ‘I don’t recall’ to most of the questions he was asked.
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 and are expected to be in court as they were last week
When the Rob & Chyna TV spinoff was pitched to him, he said he thought Chyna was ‘bold and memorable’ though he also admitted: ‘I do not think I ever met Chyna.’
He said he couldn’t recall ever speaking to any of the Kardashians about a second season of Rob & Chyna. Nor could he remember hearing from any of the Kardashians about Chyna being physically abusive to Rob or ‘beating the s**t out of his face.’
‘Did Rob ever talk to you about being physically abused by Chyna?’ he was asked in the depo. ‘I don’t remember him saying that,’ said Seacrest.
When he was asked if he ever had any discussions with the E! network about Chyna’s contract, he answered, ‘I’m not aware of one.’
A 2019 deposition of Ryan Seacrest – an executive producer on both Keeping up with the Kardashians and and Rob & Chyna – was played to the jury on Tuesday
Kris Jenner’s boyfriend, Corey Gamble also took the stand Tuesday, telling the jury how he watched Chyna punch and hit her fiancé Rob Kardashian in a drunken rage, screaming death threats and abuse at him.
Gamble, 41, said he and Kris were awoken just before daybreak the morning of December 15, 2016 by a phone call from Rob on the speaker phone.
As Rob was speaking, ‘Chyna was screaming in the background, “F**k you, you fat motherf***er”, said Gamble.
‘I could tell it was a hostile situation and needed to go there and help them.’
Gamble told the court he got dressed and drove the few blocks to Kylie Jenner’s home where Rob and Chyna were living at the time.
But before he could even get through the front door, he said, ‘I could hear her screaming at Rob. She was telling him she hated him, she would kill him, she didn’t like him.’
When he got in the house, he recounted, Chyna was standing in the bedroom doorway with Rob about seven or eight feet away from her.
‘When she saw me, she threw down whatever she had in her hand (he later said it was a rod a few feet long)…..Then she ran toward Rob and she picked up a charger cord and started whipping it at him.
‘When she got to him she started hitting him till I got in the middle of them. She also hit Rob when she was trying to hit Rob.
‘I could smell the heavy alcohol on her…..she was intoxicated. She was obviously very angry. She wanted to fight him, she wanted to hit him.’
Former E! Network president Adam Stotsky also testified on Tuesday that the spin-off show Rob & Chyna was supposed to be about their ‘newly blossoming relationship’ but when it started ‘falling apart … it was kind of gross’
E!’s Keeping up with the Kardashian ended its 20-season run in June 2021
Gamble said that he didn’t know where the couple’s young daughter Dream was in the house while the fight was happening.
But he added, ‘The house was a mess. There was stuff everywhere. Obviously stuff had been thrown and smashed.’
After ‘physically separating’ the couple, he told the court that he told Rob to get his keys and wallet from the bedroom and to get in his car and leave.
As Rob was getting to his car, Chyna ‘jumped on him again and was punching him and hitting him in the side of the head,’ said Gamble, who added that she picked up a chair and threw it at Rob’s car as he left.’
He stayed back at the house with Chyna, ‘to make sure she didn’t get in one of her cars and chase Rob,’ he said. ‘I put her keys somewhere so she could not get them.’
A female friend of Chyna was also in the house at the time and, said Gamble, ‘She told me Chyna’s been drinking all night and she’s been fighting with Rob….she’s been yelling the same stuff, ‘I hate him… I don’t like him….I would not like this fat f*** if he was not part of this family’.
Asked by Chyna’s lawyer, Lynne Ciani, if he had ever witnessed Chyna abusing Rob prior to December 15 2016, Gamble told the court: ‘That was the first time I witnessed it.
‘But it was not the first time I heard about it. I heard that when she drinks or allegedly does drugs, she gets volatile.
‘I heard that she had been drinking and hit him before – I heard that from Rob and the nanny who worked for them.’
When he was asked how Rob looked when he got to the house that morning, Gamble said, ‘He was scared. He was red around the neck. His face was red.’