Pensacola, Florida — The federal lawsuit brought by New York attorneys Allan Kassenoff and Constantine Gus Dimopoulos against Robert “Robbie” Harvey, a social media influencer with 3.1 million TikTok followers, may turn on whether it is an illegal SLAPP suit.
Filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Kassenoff and Dimopoulus’s lawsuit claims Harvey’s TikTok videos are grounds for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference with a business relationship, cyberstalking, and harassment.
They seek $150 million in damages.
Harvey’s attorney, Jonathan Davidoff, plans to mount an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) defense, arguing the lawsuit is a meritless or frivolous legal action to suppress freedom of speech.
Harvey’s videos about Kassenoff and Dimopoulus have amassed around 39 million views on TikTok, where he provides reporting and opinion on Kassenoff’s divorce and custody case and the death of his wife by suicide.
Calling the lawsuit “a spiteful revenge lawsuit,” Davidoff said Kassenoff and Dimopoulos are “attempting to reshape the narrative” about their roles in “Catherine Kassenoff’s torturous plight throughout her divorce from Mr. Kassenoff.”
Kassenoff contends Harvey’s reporting led to the loss of his position at Greenberg Traurig, where he reportedly earned $1 million per year as a patent infringement litigator. Kassenoff alleges Harvey’s “reckless and false” videos incited his followers to contact his law firm and one of its prominent clients, Samsung, forcing his ouster.
Gus Dimopoulus
Dimopoulos, who represented Kassenoff in his divorce and custody case, claims Harvey encouraged his followers to “bombard” his office with phone calls and emails, disrupting his legal practice. Dimopoulos claims he received over 2,700 harassing calls in a single day.
The focus of the lawsuit is on the truth of Harvey’s reporting about Kassenoff’s late wife, Catherine.
Catherine Kassenoff
On May 27, Catherine Kassenoff, also an attorney, posted “My Story” on Facebook.
In her “My Story” post, the last of hundreds of posts on her divorce and custody action, Catherine revealed she planned to end her life through assisted suicide at an unnamed Swiss clinic later that day.
She blamed her husband and his attorney, Dimopoulus, the corrupt family court system they manipulated, and a new cancer diagnosis for her planned suicide.
She wrote, “I can no longer endure the abuse and terror of Allan Kassenoff, who has spent the last 4 years mercilessly trying to incarcerate me on false charges. Perhaps if I had the physical endurance to keep going, I would. But with a new, terminal health issue that will soon be severely limiting my physical strength as well, and with no protection from our courts, I cannot keep running from Allan. I was recently diagnosed with a virulent and life-ending cancer.”
Catherine created a publicly accessible Google Drive to share documents, pictures, recordings, and videos for the media and the public.
In a surprising claim in the lawsuit, Allan Kassenoff alleges Harvey and Catherine conspired to lie about Catherine’s cancer diagnosis before she died.
The lawsuit claims, “Upon information and belief, Ms. Kassenoff and Defendant Harvey concocted the lie that Ms. Kassenoff had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer in order to make Ms. Kassenoff’s ‘story’ more appealing and sympathetic to the public.”
Four days after Catherine’s final post on Facebook and three days after the Frank Report broke the story, Harvey posted his first of f 25 TikTok videos on the Kassenoffs.
Harvey’s TikTok videos prominently featured clips of Allan – which were videos Catherine filmed on her phone of her husband, and which she posted on her public Google Drive – that show Allan in an unflattering light – sometimes screaming uncontrollably, telling Catherine he hates her, and in one video teaching his children to sing about their mother being a “dead duck.”
Davidoff denies his client and Catherine conspired or that Harvey even knew of her before she took her life.
“Mr. Harvey was made aware of Ms. Kassenoff’s matter by his followers and then opined and reported on it as a member of the press,” Davidoff said.
If Harvey prevails in his anti-SLAPP defense, the judge will dismiss the case and may order the plaintiffs to pay the defendant’s legal fees and punitive damages.
If not, the case will start on the long road to trial, with discovery providing details, and a spotlight on a contentious divorce and custody case that saw a mother lose her parental rights, and ultimately her life, and the role of her husband and his attorney in the matter minutely dissected.
It will explore whether a TikTok star told the truth about them, and help define the line between First Amendment-protected opinion and the protection of truth as a requirement of the reporting of facts.
