Reality Recap: Sandoval's fishy, recanted lawsuit, Ariana's sandwich legal trouble

This week, the fallout from Bethenny Frankel’s racist ass comments about the population of the Hamptons continued. The Traitors beat out Survivor for an Emmy nomination. And during an appearance on the My Friend, My Soulmate, My Podcast, Vicki Gunvalson and Teresa Giudice find out just how much they have in common. 

Tom Sandoval recants lawsuit against Ariana Madix 

Despite Ariana’s continued success post-Scandoval, there seems to be no shortage of legal drama in her personal and business life. Yesterday, Tom Sandoval announced he was dropping a lawsuit that had been filed by his legal team against Ariana. The lawsuit, filed just one day before he dropped it, alleged that she had invaded his privacy and distributed pornographic images of him and Rachel Leviss without his consent.

The lawsuit also alleged that Ariana had accessed his phone in March of 2023 and looked at images, data and communications that included the notorious “FaceTime videos” between him and Rachel during the time they had their affair.

In dropping the lawsuit, Tom issued a statement on Instagram, reading:

Something about this is very fishy. And it’s totally on brand for Tom to mislead and underrepresent his role in a situation, and then lie about it in order to put most of the blame on the other person or parties involved, much like we saw him do with Scandoval. Accountability is just not his thing. 

But if the expectation in this particular situation is that we, the audience, are to believe that his lawyer filed a lawsuit on his behalf without his full knowledge or consent – that’s just insulting to our intelligence if we’re being honest.

So what did happen? Personally, I feel like he and his legal team must have discussed this at some point over the last year. And his team moved forward with what was likely once the plan. But when Tom realized that this would not go over well, not with fans, not with his friend group and not with Ariana, who is very much onto bigger and better things, he had to walk it all back. 

It’s not to say that his lawyers are complete idiots and don’t recognize the amount of lawsuits they could file in a situation like this, particularly when laws around revenge porn are still very much the wild west, which I wrote about here, but I do think that he realized this would not bode well for him and therefore pulled the plug. 

Ariana Madix is hit with another lawsuit

That’s not the only legal trouble Ariana’s found herself in this week, though. Just months after Katie Maloney announced via Bravo that she and Ariana had cut ties with Chef Penny Davidi, who fans will have recognized from her cameos on Vanderpump Rules over the years, she is suing them both. 

Chef Penny alleges that the business partners did not uphold their end of the trio’s written partnership. She says that in June 2023 they all agreed that Chef Penny would own 10% of the partnership. Her role at the time was determined to be the COO/Director of Culinary. For those that watched the last two seasons, this seems consistent with the role she served in the sandwich shop.

Chef Penny stated that she agreed on a monthly compensation of $7,500. That number was supposed to increase to $10,000 monthly as of January this year. That amount was dependent upon Chef Penny’s contributions to running the sandwich shop – a job she says she has fulfilled up to the ties being cut.

In her complaint, Chef Penny accuses Ariana and Katie of reneging on their obligations, denying the terms of the original partnership. She is now looking for a judge to determine that the terms and conditions of that original partnership are in fact legally binding.

Despite lawsuits being commonplace in business, most people are of the mindset that Chef Penny is in the wrong for overestimating her role in the sandwich shop. But a contract is a contract and the women could lose the case if a judge sides with Chef Penny. 

This has the potential to be a pretty big storyline for the next season of Vanderpump Rules, whenever that might air, mostly because this business relationship was born out of the pair’s connection to Lisa Vanderpump. It was Lisa who facilitated the introduction between Chef Penny and the girls as they worked toward getting their sandwich shop off the ground. 

Whether it will sour the relationship with Lisa is an entirely different story. Lisa is a professional. And considering how good she is at balancing relationships with opposing parties, I doubt she’ll get dragged into this mess. But this does serve as a reminder that it takes a lot more than a little capital to open a restaurant, particularly when it comes to understanding the business aspect of things – which is what caused such a massive holdup in the opening of both Something About Her and Schwartz & Sandy’s. Perhaps the cast members eager to become restaurateurs will focus more on expanding their knowledge than capitalizing on clout. 

Caroline Brooks and Lesa Milan stand up to Taleen Marie and her messy man

During this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Dubai, the group gets into a heated discussion as they all try to get back on the same page ahead of a trip to Bali. However, things go left when Taleen’s husband gets involved, forcing Caroline and Lesa, who aren’t necessarily the best of friends, to stick together.

At one point, it’s mentioned that Caroline has referred to Taleen, her close friend that she brought onto the show, as a “beggar”. And during the discussion, Lesa is trying to get to the bottom of who said what. She asks Caroline what, specifically, Taleen has begged for. At this point, Taleen’s husband, Rafael, jumps in and urges Caroline to correct herself, to which Caroline responds unfavourably, urging him to stay out of it. 

When Taleen points her finger at Caroline and says she should be ashamed, she fires back, telling Taleen that she’s two-faced. And to be honest, so far this season, she kind of has been a bit two-sided. But Taleen also has a point when she says that Caroline has been behind a lot of the drama this season.

But when Taleen and Caroline accuse each other of drinking too much, things go really left and Rafael, again, steps in. To be clear, both women are visibly intoxicated, as they have been for most of the season. (Hence Taleen falling coochie forward at the Beyoncé concert). 

While I stan a man who takes up for his wife, prime example being Nate Cabral who stands on business when it comes to his very messy and very aggressive wife Danielle, Rafael just doesn’t seem capable of handling the smoke, not from the bad gyal Jamaican duo that is Caroline and Lesa, especially. Naturally, Lesa and others try to diffuse the situation. But when Rafael says he “doesn’t give a damn” about the cameras, then instructs Caroline to shut her mouth, things escalate yet again. 

During a confessional, Sara Al Madani reminds the audience that in Dubai, you can be charged just for yelling, let alone causing this much of a disturbance at someone’s housewarming party. But alas, here we are, with the house husbands showing us just how messy they can be.