Accuser seeks default against mogul; he says he wasn’t served

An ex-employee of Greek business mogul Alki David said she will move for a default judgment in a wrongful termination suit alleging the media entrepreneur sexually assaulted her, but his lawyer said he was never served.

The woman's attorney, Ebby S. Bakhtiar in Los Angeles, said David dodged a number of attempts to serve him with the lawsuit that was filed Sept. 30, 2020 and the plaintiff's attorney said Monday he will be filing a motion for default judgment very soon if David does not respond.

"Our process servers made efforts to serve him but they've been unsuccessful. They're stopped at a gate at his Malibu home and are not allowed in or what have you," Bakhtiar said. "A lot of effort has been made to serve him, but he's just been evading it as much as possible."

Although he is not the defense attorney of record yet, Fred Heather of Glaser Weil Fink Jacobs Howard Avchen & Shapiro LLP said he expects to represent David once he is served with the complaint.

"I am counsel for Alki David. Mr. David has not been served in the case and we have not appeared," Heather said Monday. "If and when we do appear, it is my belief and expectation that the case will be vigorously defended and Mr. David ultimately will be exonerated and completely vindicated."

Originally filed by Thomas V. Girardi -- who served as co-counsel until his license was suspended and his firm ceased operating earlier this year -- the wrongful termination suit accuses David of intentional sexual assault, battery and forcible rape, among a other allegations including wrongful and/or constructive discharge.

The plaintiff, Jane Doe, who said she had been working since 2018 as a brand ambassador for Swiss-X, a David-owned CBD oil company, met with him for a meeting at a Hollywood theater he also owned. During the April 2019 meeting, the woman said David forced her into a small computer closet with his dog and raped her, according to the complaint. David later "retaliatorily denied pay and terminated," Doe after he felt threatened she would report his "failure to pay owed wages in a timely manner," the complaint reads. Jane Doe v. Alkiviades David, 20STCV37498 (L.A. Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 30, 2020).

In December 2019, after little more than an hour of deliberation, a jury in an unrelated suit ordered David to pay $50 million in punitive damages to a different former employee who sued him for sexual harassment. Plaintiff Mahim Khan was one of three Los Angeles women to win sexual harassment suits against David in 2019, leaving him owing at least $65 million in damages.

However, before the Khan suit concluded, David burst into the courtroom before final arguments, and in an erratic rant accused opposing counsel from Allred, Maroko & Goldberg LLP of orchestrating an illegal plot against him with several former female employees. He made similar allegations in a statement released after the recent Jane Doe suit was filed in October 2020, saying it was a part of a "web of fraudulent cases," led by former Harvey Weinstein attorney Lisa Bloom and women's rights attorney Gloria Allred.

Asked if either Bloom or Allred were involved with the Jane Doe suit, Bakhtiar said no.

"Lisa Bloom and Gloria Allred aren't even involved in this case, so I don't know what to say about that," Bakhtiar said.

Bakhtiar said there are some procedural steps that need to be taken before filing a motion for default judgment against David but that his co-counsel, Frances J. Flynn, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mel Recana, they intended to do so during a status conference Friday. No one for the defense appeared.