One day you can be at the top of the world, naming chicken-salad sandwiches after Reese Witherspoon, and the next, you can be getting sued twice in one week. Ariana Madix is having what is probably only the second-worst week of her life, thanks to two back-to-back lawsuits from her cheating ex-boyfriend Tom Sandoval and one of her former business partners, Penny Davidi.
The first suit came Tuesday, when Madix was sued by Sandoval in an ongoing case involving his infamous affair with Rachel (formerly Raquel) Leviss. In February, Leviss filed a lawsuit against Sandoval and Madix, accusing the former couple of distributing revenge porn. (Madix famously found out about the affair after finding sexually explicit videos of Leviss on Sandoval’s phone, which Leviss claims Sandoval recorded without her consent, and Madix has admitted to sending two of those videos to herself.) Now, Sandoval’s counter-suit attempts to pin Leviss’s allegations onto Madix alone, claiming that she “obtained access” to his phone, “made copies” of the videos, and “distributed” them to “third parties … without Sandoval’s authorization or permission.” The filing accused Madix of invasion of privacy, calling her “intrusion” “offensive and objectionable.”
Suing his scorned ex-girlfriend for revenge porn is one of the few things Sandoval could do to make himself look even worse, and pretty much everyone, including a few of Sandoval and Madix’s Vanderpump Rules castmates, said as much. (On Instagram, Scheana Shay described it as a “shit thing to do after a shitty thing you already did.”) Speaking with Us Weekly, Sandoval’s lawyer, Matthew Geragos — who just so happens to be the brother of Leviss’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, a level of mess that should not surprise you at this point — defended the cross-complaint as a “customary legal action” that’s “crucial to ensure that liability, if any, is fairly distributed based on the actual level of involvement of fault of each party.”
But it appears he and Sandoval were not exactly on the same page about what the implications of this “customary legal action” were — on Thursday, Sandoval wrote on Instagram that he was “in no way” suing Madix, claiming that Geragos, “whose advice I trusted,” had “urged” him to file the cross-complaint without explicitly using the terms “new lawsuit” or “suing.” “Upon realizing what this action actually means,” Sandoval wrote, “I have removed Matt Geragos from my legal team.” He claimed to “hold no ill will or vindictiveness toward Ariana,” and says he’s removing the cross-complaint.
You would think a woman so ensnared in personal drama might find solace in her professional endeavors, but even Madix’s female-empowerment sandwich shop, Something About Her, is plagued with legal strife. On Thursday, celebrity chef Penny Davidi filed a lawsuit against Madix and her co-owner slash Vanderpump Rules co-star, Katie Maloney, claiming that the duo violated the terms of a written partnership with Davidi from June 2023. In legal documents reviewed by the Cut, Davidi — who works under an LLC called Put a Fork in It — claimed she was promised 10 percent ownership of the shop, a $7,500-per-month payment until January 2024, then $10,000 per month after that, and a COO/director of culinary title. Though she did not clarify what piece of this agreement Madix and Maloney have reneged on, she claims they have “repudiated the existence and terms of the Partnership as alleged herein.” Hopefully, she does not plan to Put a Fork in Something About Her, because at this point, Madix could really use a win.
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