Tomas Gonzalez, Grubman's driver since the SUV-rampage incident, quit on Memorial Day and now claims that he regularly worked over 60 hours a week chauffeuring the publicist to parties of Jay-Z and Britney Spears, but was only paid straight time.
"He quit because he hadn't received his wages in a couple weeks—overtime or regular pay," said Neil Greenberg, Gonzalez's lawyer. "He's got bills to pay."
“I worked for her for 10 or 12 hours a day for the last 12 years, earning $55,000 annually,” Gonzales said. “She told me people weren’t paying her and she couldn’t pay me.”
Grubman's lawyer, John Rosenberg, said she "views these claims, brought by a disgruntled former employee, to be entirely without merit."
On July 7, 2001, after being told to move out of a fire lane by the bouncer of the Conscious Point Inn, Grubman allegedly called the man “white trash” and backed her SUV into the queue of people trying to get into the club. Grubman was whisked away from the scene by friends before the police could get there. Prosecutors believed that Grubman was drunk, despite the fact that police never gave her a breathalyzer test.
She faced serious jail time after she was charged with 26 felony crimes ranging from DWI to reckless endangerment, but only served a month in jail after taking a plea deal. – Michael Campos, LCT assistant editor
Print | posted on Monday, June 27, 2011 10:49 AM