Chopra Suit Alleges Blackmail Over Hooker Defendant Claims Guru Sexually Harassed Her

APBnews.com, Dec. 7, 1999
By Randy Dotinga

[IMAGE] SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com) -- Talk about bad karma. Deepak Chopra, best-selling self-help author and spiritual guru to the stars, is suing a former co-worker, claiming she tried to blackmail him for $1 million and threatened to expose an alleged rendezvous with a prostitute.

Chopra, who is married, denies the affair.

The civil case, which is being heard by a San Diego jury, involves allegations of stalking, sexual harassment, forgery and improper taping of telephone calls, in addition to blackmail and prostitution.

The allegations against Chopra have hurt him publicly, his attorney, Carla DiMare, told the jury Monday. "The damage is enormous -- the pain and anguish that this man has endured," she said.

Defendant has claims of her own

The co-worker, Joyce Weaver, denies the blackmail charges and is pursuing a lawsuit of her own. She accuses Chopra of firing her after she accused him of sexual harassment.

"Dr. Chopra has benefited from filing this action as a blackmail case," said Weaver's attorney, Peter Friesen. "He has attracted the attention of the media and he has succeeded, to some extent, in drowning out her complaint."

In the mid-1990s, Chopra ran the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in San Diego in a partnership with a chain of local hospitals. Weaver helped the center organize seminars. According to DiMare, Weaver was "stalking" Chopra. "She wanted to be around him and he was trying to avoid her," she said during opening statements Monday. He was patient with her, however, because he knew she was "emotionally troubled," DiMare said.

A phone call from a prostitute

In May 1995, by all accounts, a former prostitute called the center's office and said she had slept with Chopra in 1991. The woman left a message, which ended up on the voice mail of the center's director. Weaver admitted in court that she used the director's password to access the message and record it.

Chopra contends that Weaver approached him three times in a parking lot and demanded $50,000 to not go to the media with the hooker's story, DiMare said. Chopra contends that Weaver later asked for $1 million, DiMare said.

DiMare also alleged that Weaver schemed with her boyfriend, Richard Post, to dig up dirt on Chopra.

Missing PI boyfriend

According to DiMare, Post is an unlicensed private investigator who began poking into Chopra's past in 1994, well before Weaver knew about the prostitute. Post is now missing, DiMare said.

Weaver denies ever trying to blackmail Chopra. Her attorney, Friesen, told the jury that Chopra has no witnesses to the alleged threats and didn't bother to tell anyone -- not even his attorneys -- about them at the time.

"Ms. Weaver will tell you that she would not in a million years make a demand that would compromise a career she loved just so she could share a $50,000 booty with a prostitute," Friesen said. Conservative paper published incorrect story In the summer of 1996, another player entered the Chopra drama.

The Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine, printed a story about Chopra's alleged encounter with the prostitute. Matt Labash, the reporter, relied on an interview with the hooker and a credit card receipt, according to Columbia Journalism Review magazine, which published a story about the dispute over the article. Chopra filed a $35 million libel suit against The Weekly Standard, which published an apology and a retraction a year later.

In testimony Monday, Weaver said she contacted Labash after the article came out and the two talked about how the reporter could fend off Chopra's attorneys. Labash did not immediately return a telephone message left at his Maryland home Monday evening.

Weaver acknowledged that she told Labash she could get her hands on Chopra's daily schedules and American Express credit card receipts from 1991, the time of the alleged prostitution encounter. She also said she might have discussed the prospect of writing a revealing book about Chopra instead of going through legal "crap" in the court system.

Some of the conversations between Labash and Weaver were taped; Weaver said she did not recall giving Labash permission to do so. Taping telephone calls without permission is illegal in some cases in Maryland.

More dirt to come?

Meanwhile, Weaver's attorney hinted to the jury that the prostitute encounter denied by Chopra might have happened after all. Friesen said testimony would show that the man accused of forging the hooker's credit-card receipts -- an assistant of Chopra's -- might not be guilty.

The Chopra trial is expected to last for weeks in downtown San Diego's Hall of Justice. Chopra, based in the San Diego's wealthy seaside neighborhood of La Jolla, is attending the trial and taking a break from his travels around the world.

The court will take a regularly scheduled recess around the holidays. That will allow Chopra to hold a millennium celebration on Dec. 31 in Palm Springs, featuring a live message by satellite from the Dalai Lama. The event will be broadcast on pay-per-view channels worldwide.

The trial initially began last week, but a mistrial was declared, reportedly because one of the lawyers failed to follow the judge's instructions. A new jury was sworn in and began hearing testimony on Monday.

Under California law, verdicts in civil cases require agreement by at least nine of 12 jurors.