Andy Cohen and Melissa Gorga are being sued for $30 million by the latter’s ex-business partner at the boutique Envy, Jackie Beard Robinson.
The 38-year-old Real Housewives of New Jersey star and the Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen host, 49, are being accused of defaming Robinson on their shows. Robinson is also alleging that Cohen and Gorga intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
According to documents filed by Robinson on Wednesday, December 6, the lifestyle expert met Gorga in 2014 and the duo decided to go into business together in August 2015. Robinson claims the pair signed an agreement naming herself as the owner of Envy in October 2015, but by the end of the following year, their business relationship had been severed.
In her lawsuit, Robinson claims she removed her belongings from Envy in “broad daylight” on New Year’s Day 2017, then alleging that her former business partner was “misappropriating over $37,000 from Envy without authorization.” Robinson’s claims are in response to Gorga saying on live television that she “snuck into Envy in the middle of the night and stole clothing.”
The allegations resurfaced when Cohen recently asked Gorga about her relationship with Robinson on WWHL. “Wow, so, that lady wound up ripping you off?” he asked, according to the suit, to which Gorga responded, “Yes.”
In her claims, Robinson stated that Gorga and Cohen made her out to look like a felon, which posed detrimental effects to her business as “an entrepreneur and international fashion influencer.”
Also included in the suit are NBCUniversal and Dorothy Toran, a RHONJ production executive.
Bravo responded to the allegations made in the lawsuit on Thursday, December 7.
“There is no merit to this lawsuit,” a spokesman for Bravo tells Us Weekly.
