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Robert De Niro is on his second day of testimony in a trial between him and his former assistant.
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He defended calling her at her grandmother’s funeral, saying she stated it was OK.
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“I do not know in the event that they had been placing the physique within the floor,” he stated.
Robert De Niro spent a number of minutes on the witness stand in Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday explaining why it was OK for him to make two telephone calls to his assistant at her grandmother’s funeral.
De Niro wished the assistant, Chase Robinson, to buy bus tickets for his son, he stated. She had instructed her at a sure level that it could be high-quality for him to name her, he stated.
“I do not know in the event that they had been placing the physique within the floor or at a wake or one thing,” De Niro testified on the witness stand.
De Niro is on his second day of testimony for a civil trial between him and Robinson.
Robinson alleged that he oversaw a office rife with gender discrimination via his firm, Canal Productions, the place she labored as an govt assistant for over a decade, and subjected her to “gratuitous undesirable bodily contact.”
De Niro has denied the allegations and filed a countersuit, accusing her of improperly charging a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} price of private bills like meals and Uber rides to the corporate bank card, stealing 5 million Delta SkyMiles for private holidays, and having “loafed throughout working hours, binge-watching astounding hours of TV reveals on Netflix.”
The 80-year-old star of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Meet the Fockers” spent a lot of his testimony Tuesday morning asking Robinson’s lawyer Andrew Macurdy to repeat his questions.
At one level, Macurdy requested De Niro if it was true that Robinson ordered “provides” to her own residence earlier than bringing them through Uber to De Niro’s townhouse, which he stated didn’t have its personal doorman to deal with deliveries.
“May you repeat that?” De Niro requested.
Macurdy tried asking the query once more.
“You are calling them ‘slides’?” De Niro requested once more.
Finally, De Niro obtained the query.
“Oh, provides! I genuinely didn’t perceive what you stated,” De Niro responded, earlier than saying “That is high-quality” if she expensed Ubers for that objective.
Macurdy pressed De Niro on a supply he produced from Nobu, the restaurant he co-owns.
“One time you actually wished a selected martini at Nobu and also you requested her to ship it for you, sure?” Macurdy requested, noting that it was at 11 p.m.
“That might have been one time,” De Niro responded. “That is completely different.”
Between 2017 and 2019, based on De Niro’s lawsuit, the corporate’s bank card had accrued sufficient factors to be price 8 million Delta SkyMiles. Robinson took 5 million for herself, he alleged.
Whereas De Niro conceded Tuesday that there have been occasional journeys the place he permitted her use of them, he stated she ought to have been even handed.
His personal youngsters, he complained, needed to pay for airplane fares as an alternative of utilizing the airplane factors.
“I made it clear to her in a number of conversations, do not overuse SkyMiles,” he stated.
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