In the end, Blac Chyna just couldn’t keep up.
After 10 hours of deliberations, a Los Angeles jury on Monday returned its verdict on the $100 million defamation suit that Chyna filed against the “vindictive” Kardashian family, ruling that the 33-year-old model would receive no damages.
The decision brings to a close a four-year legal battle that began in 2017, when Chyna, whose real name is Angela Renée White, sued Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Kylie Jenner, and Khloé Kardashian, accusing them of conspiring to kill her reality television career.
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In her original, sprawling complaint, Chyna alleged that the Kardashian-Jenners had “unlawfully plotted” to destroy her and ex-fiancé Rob Kardashian’s E! reality show, Rob & Chyna, scuttling its second season.
But the Kardashians did not defame Chyna, nor did they wrongfully interfere with her contract, the jury found Monday.
The Kardashian-Jenner clan were not in court to hear the verdict. When asked, a lawyer for the women said they were all in New York “at some gala,” according to a reporter in the room.
Chyna, who was present, displayed no visible reaction to the verdict, the Associated Press reported.
Over the course of the tumultuous nine-day trial, Chyna’s relationship with Rob Kardashian was the center of often explosive testimony. All four Kardashian-Jenners took the stand, claiming that Chyna had strangled her ex-partner and co-star with a phone-charging cord in December 2016. They painted a picture of a violent altercation in which Chyna allegedly hit Kardashian with a metal rod, pointed a gun at him, and finally hurled a patio chair at his car as he escaped Kylie Jenner’s property, where the incident took place.
Chyna, in her testimony, downplayed the allegations, insisting that the cord and the gun had been part of a playful “joke” as the pair celebrated the renewal of their series. She denied hitting or chucking furniture at him.
In his closing argument, Chyna’s lawyer called the family’s account of the abuse “not credible,” arguing that no police report had ever been filed and that Kardashian didn’t have so much as “a Band-Aid on him” following the alleged incident, BuzzFeed News reported.
Chyna and Kardashian, who share a daughter named Dream, embarked on a breakneck year-long romance in early 2016. The relationship reached its zenith in April, with the couple announcing their engagement after three months of dating. Dream was born that November—and one month later, Chyna and Kardashian announced that they were splitting up.
Tensions flared in July 2017, when Kardashian posted several nude photos of Chyna to his social media. The model subsequently took out a restraining order against her ex-fiancé. A separate trial over the alleged “revenge porn” incident is set to begin in May, according to Rolling Stone.
In her October 2017 filing, Chyna called Kardashian “an abuser intent on destroying... the mother of his baby, who left him in 2016.” The lawsuit continued: “In revenge, the Kardashian-Jenner family became media predators, slut-shaming her on social media and killing her television show, which had already begun filming a second season.”
Also closely scrutinized at the trial were a number of texts and emails sent by the Kardashian-Jenners to E! network executives around December 2016. Exhibits included a text from Kris Jenner, discussing how Chyna “beat the shit out of Rob’s face,” and an email sent by Kylie Jenner, saying that she felt “very strongly” that Rob & Chyna should be axed.
“She will proceed with using and physically abusing my brother,” Jenner wrote.
Network executives from E! who testified at the trial told the court that the Kardashians’ input had not affected the decision to cancel Rob & Chyna. Rather, they said, it was the dissolution of the star couple’s relationship that led to the death of the project. The ugly final act of their engagement, former E! president Adam Stotsky said, didn’t make for “the kind of show we would want to produce.”
A judge also weighed throwing out part of the suit last week in the middle of deliberations, considering Kim Kardashian’s attorney’s request to throw out Chyna’s claims against his client specifically. Chyna’s attorneys argued that despite the fact that they had not provided any particular defamatory statements from Kim, she had “ratified” the other defendants’ words. The judge dismissed the claims against Kim on Friday.
Of probable cold comfort to Chyna was last month’s jury selection process, which was colored by prospective jurors boldly insulting the Kardashian-Jenners directly to their faces.
“Anything that has to do with their names is just a big no for me,” one man told counsel, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t think reality TV is good for society.”
