In closing arguments in the Elizabeth Taylor v. Alki David Case, TV lawyer Bloom went low and showy while David’s attorney laid out the plaintiffs web of inconsistent lies
It was the last day of a weeks long trial in a hot courtroom in Downtown L.A.. The plaintiff’s attorney, Lisa Bloom (still stinging from the media and her mother’s revulsion over her associations with Harvey Weinstein), went for showmanship, waving empty folders around and calling Alki David “evil” five or six times. She showed a clip from the trailer for the mockumentary about David, Lord of the Freaks, again and misconstrued David’s statements on film, again. Bloom stretched the truth left and right, and accused the defense witnesses of being on “Team Alki” even though none have current business or personal ties to him anymore. (In fact every single one of them was also fired by Alki over the last three years).
Bloom also admitted Taylor scrounged and begged for reluctant ex-empoyees to join her in her suit, leaving out the fact, as proven in court, that she offered them money, and offered to help them find better, higher paying jobs. The texts show that one of her witnesses, Chasity Jones, said multiple times, “I didn’t seen nothing!”
Alki David represented himself in the trial until he was finally expelled by Judge Jonathan Lui last Thursday (at which point he moonwalked down the Stanley Mosk court building’s marble hall past the jury waiting on benches). His outbursts throughout the trial earned him sanctions from Judge Lui, and laughs from the jury. Even Judge Lui had to fight to keep from laughing when David made a comical fart noise and said, “Please Lisa!”
When it came time for Ellyn Garofolo, who was technically representing the companies FilmOn Networks and Hologram USA in the trial, to do her closing arguments, she explained that David’s outburst were about his anger, and though they were often inappropropriate in the context of a court proceeding, they were tied to the fact that he was telling the truth.
Garofolo then carefully went through all Taylor’s claims (which she had never told anyone about either inside or outside the company during her employment–not even her psychiatrist, a Jacksonville, FLA hack called Dr. Burak who is the author of “Assholic Healthcare”, or her mother). Garofolo pointed out several crucial lies from Taylor that were proven in court over the three week trial: She was not anywhere near a “Top Performer” at the company as she had stated (in fact she didn’t make her quota 3 out of the 4 months she was employed); She could not have been on a Hologram USA stage with holograms without seeing what the hologram images were (an expert and diagram were presented to the jury so they could understand the technology behind this and you can see yourself in this segment about Hologram USA from CBS News). In fact, Garofolo showed Taylor lied
The other witnesses also lied. Chasity Jones said that the two office horseplay incidents happened on separate days, and that though Taylor said Jones untied her from a chair at one point, Jones said she did not.
Taylor’s own mother said she felt Taylor’s recent health problems were the result of the stress related to the lawsuit, and not related to her time working at FilmOn. She also testified that Taylor never mentioned any problems at work to her in the past.
Dr. Burak testified that Taylor’s elaborate cocktail of psychoactive meds has remained the same since two years before she worked at FilmOn. He admitted that some medications could have stopped working over the last six years, throwing the mixture out of balance, and causing mental distress and erratic behavior in Taylor.
He also said the blotches on her face she attributes to FilmOn, predated her employment there and are more likely related to leaking silicon from her damaged breast implants. He said that Lexapro, which she was on for several years, is probably responsible for her weight gain. He also pointed out that she never told him even though he was giving her therapy during the time she worked at FilmOn, that she was enduring any problems or harassment at work. Burak also claimed he had lost all of his files on Taylor.
Garofolo made the point also that preparing to lie under oath in court is itself very stressful, and probably contributed to the problems in Taylor’s life over the last couple of years.
Garofolo meticulously took apart all of the other witnesses for Taylor. Ms. Sherman, the expensive HR expert hired by Bloom, based her entire testimony on reading the plaintiff’s testimony in court–none of it too into account David’s witnesses who were involved in supervising Taylor at FilmOn.
David’s own witnesses showed that Taylor was a terrible employee, who was always stiring up trouble in the workplace, and who had made complaints about multiple employees for various concocted reasons (including “devil worship”) during her time there. The fact that she went to her supervisor with these complaints and to the Controller Yelena Calendar who also functioned as an HR person at the tiny company, cast doubts on her claims against David, and her claim that there was no HR structure at FilmOn.
Taylor’s supervisor described 4 phone calls from lawyers representing Taylor–in which he was offered money to testify. This connects to the texts shown the jury in which plaintiffs are texting eachother, “Help me and you will get $ too.”
Taylor’s supervisor made it very clear he fired Taylor because she was not working out, and had taken an unapproved two week vacation. Most importantly, since he did not know about any sexual harassment claims against David, he could not have fired Taylor in retalition for her rebuffing any of David’s behavior.
“Why didn’t he know about these claims?” asked Garofolo. “Because they’re weren’t any. Taylor had not made these allegations to any supervisor at FilmOn. To any co-worker. Not to her mother who she testified she was very close to. Not to her psychiatrist who she had known for several years and was in therapy with every week. No, Taylor did not come up with these claims until after she was fired for perfectly good reasons, and she was angry, and she saw an opportunity to get money.”
Garofolo closed by pointing out that all of Bloom’s “MeToo” witnesses have their own claims against David, that they seek their own financial gain. “MeToo” cases are the only kind of case where witnesses who stand to gain from an outcome are allowed to testify about their own experiences, even ones unrelated to the plaintiff and her allegations at hand.