Hell hath no fury like a diva scorned, especially when said diva happens to be the Mariah Carey. The record-breaking chanteuse has been wrapped up in a legal battle with her ex-assistant for a while now, and a judge has recently sanctioned MC's former employee for destroying evidence in the ongoing case.
Page Six reports that Lianna "Azarian" Shakhnazarian, former assistant to the Caution singer, has been penalized by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Andrew Borrok by request of Carey after it was found that Azarian did in fact destroy videos and WhatsApp messages important to the case. For those that need a quick update, Mariah claims that Lianna secretly recorded her doing intimate-yet-embarrassing things and then proceeded to blackmail Carey if she didn’t receive $8 million in hush money. In addition to penalization for those destroyed messages, the judge also ruled that Azarian purposefully caused water damage to her old phone in order to get rid of even more evidence that Mariah could've used in her favor.
Here's a breakdown of the judge's decision he made on Friday, via Page Six:
"Trading in her cellphone without taking any measures to save the videos, messages, and other data after this lawsuit was filed, when Ms. Shakhnazarian had an undeniable duty to preserve evidence, was grossly negligent, if not intentional," Borrok wrote in his decision from Friday.
Shakhnazarian’s “actions constituted spoliation of critical evidence and severely prejudiced Ms. Carey’s ability to prosecute her case,” the decision reads.
Borrok said that he will make an “inverse inference” against Shakhnazarian at trial.
The judge ordered Azarian to not only turn over her current cell phone for a forensic examination but also to pay Mariah's attorneys fees. We wonder if this situation will end up in another future Mariah Carey chart-topper.
