Allan Kassenoff, former patent litigation shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, individually and as guardian of his minor children, along with his matrimonial attorney, sued social media influencer Robert Harvey in federal court on Tuesday over “a few clicks of his keyboard and a video upload to TikTok” that allegedly financially destroyed Kassenoff and harmed his young children.
According to the complaint, Robert Harvey, who has millions of followers on social media, uploaded multiple videos on various social media platforms representing that Kassenoff was abusive to his wife and children and took advantage of the matrimonial court system. After ignoring one of Kassenoff’s children’s messages about the first video, says the complaint, Harvey continued to upload videos and make false, defamatory, and misleading statements online and went so far as to tell his millions of followers to flood Greenberg Traurig and Samsung, one of the firm’s largest clients, with messages. Kassenoff asserts that this assault caused him to lose his job at Greenberg Traurig.
The complaint alleges that Harvey asked his followers to do the same thing to Kassenoff’s matrimonial attorney, Gus Dimopoulos. At one point, Dimopoulos’s office received over 2,700 phone calls in one day, says the complaint.
Harvey’s videos detail the Kassenoff family’s “story,” specifically showing clips of Mr. Kassenoff losing his temper around his children while Harvey tells the allegedly false story of Mr. Kassenoff’s abuse towards Ms. Kassenoff and their children. Kassenoff asserts that in reality, the abuse in the family was perpetrated by his wife.
Ms. Kassenoff, according to the complaint, had a history of blatantly favoring the Kassenoff’s biological children over their adopted child, deliberately excluding their adopted child from certain activities, verbally berating her, and assigning her chores when the other children were never asked to do chores, among other things. In a declaration quoted in the complaint, one of the Kassenoffs’ former au pairs stated that Ms. Kassenoff purposefully angered Mr. Kassenoff around their children so that they would see how angry their father could get.
The TikTok videos themselves have been viewed more than 39,000,000 times, liked almost 5,000,000 times, and accumulated over 150,000 comments. Kassenoff’s three children appear in some of the videos, faces unblurred. The complaint notes that Harvey has told his followers that he has done “due diligence on the facts” and that “everything he has said in the Harvey Videos is ‘fact.’”
The complaint specifically seeks relief for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference with a business relationship, and cyberstalking.
Additional Reading
Ex-BigLaw partner shown in tirade videos sues influencer for allegedly destroying his career, ABA Journal (September 7, 2023)
Image Credit: nikkimeel / Shutterstock.com
