Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval informed an L.A. judge that he will be representing himself in court as part of Raquel Leviss’ invasion of privacy lawsuit after parting ways with his lawyer, In Touch can exclusively report.
According to court documents obtained by In Touch, Tom, 42, filed a substitution of attorney notice in the ongoing legal battle involving Raquel, 30, and his former girlfriend, Ariana Madix.
Tom said that his attorney, Varand Gourjian, from the law firm Gourjian Law Group, will now longer be working on the case.
Varand and his partner Tara Karamians had been working on the case for months.
Previously, Tom had another lawyer, Matt Geragos, working with Varand and Tara.
However, Tom and Matt cut ties after Matt filed a countersuit against Ariana, 39, in the case that he claimed he was not fully informed about.
As In Touch previously reported, Raquel sued her ex-fling Tom and Ariana. Raquel and Tom had an affair while Tom and Ariana were in a long-term relationship and living together.
Ariana found explicit videos of Raquel on Tom’s phone, which Raquel claimed Tom recorded from their FaceTime chats without her consent.
In her lawsuit, Raquel said she believed Ariana had shared the videos with third parties. Tom and Ariana have denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The court has denied their attempts to dismiss the case.
Ariana recently filed an appeal of that decision. The appeal is pending.
Now, Tom is currently without legal counsel. His notice to the court explicitly stated he will be representing himself moving forward. He also notified Raquel and Ariana’s legal team of the decision.
As In Touch previously reported, Ariana told the court she never shared the videos with anyone. “I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else,” Ariana told the court. “To be clear, I only saw the video of [Raquel] … in places secluded from others.”
In a declaration submitted in court opposing Ariana’s attempt to dismiss the claims against her, Raquel said, “It is not just that [Ariana] had discovered the recordings and confronted me about their contents. If that were all that happened, [Ariana] would not have been named in this lawsuit. But that is not all that happened.”
She added, “[Ariana’s] implication that my mental health struggles were brief in duration or minor could not be further from the truth. I was in a state of extreme distress as a result of the events described in the lawsuit, and I entered treatment in an extremely dark and scary place mentally. My symptoms included severe emotional distress, physical manifestations of such distress, anxiety, shock, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, powerless, sleeplessness, nightmares, and loss of enjoyment of life.”
As In Touch previously reported, Tom and Ariana recently learned that Vanderpump Rules producers would be recasting the show for season 12.
On top of the show being recast, Tom and his friend Tom Schwartz recently announced they were closing their bar Schwartz & Sandy’s after two years.
“With a heavy heart, we’ve made the difficult decision to close Schwartz & Sandy’s at the end of December,” Sandoval said in a statement. “This hasn’t been an easy choice for my partners and me, but other priorities and commitments have taken hold. While this business venture has been an incredible stepping stone in my life, one I will always cherish, I look forward to exciting new endeavors.”
