LA Judge Grants Raquel Leviss The Right to 'Continue Suing' Ex Tom Sandoval for Alleged Revenge Porn

Vanderpump Rules star Rachel Leviss, filed a shocking complaint in February, earlier this year, accusing co-stars Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval of making and distributing revenge porn against her. Asserting that Leviss' case portrayed him as 'predatory' and Madix as a 'scorned woman,' Sandoval filed a motion to dismiss the case in April.

However, a Los Angeles judge recently ruled in favor of Leviss, allowing her to pursue her claims of eavesdropping and invasion of privacy, according to Page Six.

As per the outlet, the judge stated, "Any person who is injured by a CIPA [California’s Invasion of Privacy Act] violation is permitted to bring a civil action against the person who committed the violation.‘Communication’ as used in [CIPA] is not limited to conversations or oral communications but rather encompasses any communication, regardless of its form, where any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto. If the act covers eavesdropping on or recording of a telephone call, it surely covers the nonconsensual recording of the most intimate and private form of communication between two people." The court also acknowledged that Leviss knew she may be videotaped, but it accepted the argument that she didn't anticipate Sandoval would preserve the video and duplicate it.

Rolling Stone claimed that Judge Crowley was amenable to hearing arguments from Sandoval's counsel, despite having made clear that he intended to support Leviss' accusations of breach of privacy. According to the publication, Sandoval's attorney, Tiffany Krog, said that Leviss had not provided sufficient evidence to support her allegations. The Judge asked Korgg, "Her sharing of the video was a contemporaneous sharing, as opposed to an understanding that they could be recorded, true? Isn’t the intrusion, the recording?"

Krogg replied, "I would say [Sandoval] merely saved a copy of these videos that Leviss was making with her camera, pointing it at herself and sharing with the defendant." In response, the judge asserted that recording private moments with the knowledge they would 'evaporate into the ether' after viewing was not the same as knowing they were being filmed and may be shared.

However, Crowley rejected Leviss' third claim of emotional distress because of insufficient evidence. He stated, "[Leviss] fails to allege her emotional distress was proximately caused by Sandoval’s conduct, or that Sandoval’s conduct, namely the alleged sexually explicit recordings, were made with the intention of inflicting injury to [Leviss] or with the realization that injury would result from the act of recording.

Complaint alleges that the sexually explicit recordings were not disseminated by Sandoval, but rather discovered by Madix when she searched through Sandoval’s phone when it purportedly fell from his pocket during a performance at Tom Tom. Further, [Leviss’] Complaint alleges on information and belief that it was Madix, not Sandoval, who distributed and/or showed the alleged sexually explicit videos to others without Plaintiff’s knowledge or consent."