Everyone's piling on the news of a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by the former housekeeper of Kobe and Vanessa Bryant, but it is TMZ.com that's got the juice.
Maria Jimenez is suing in Orange County Superior Court for wrongful discharge, invasion of privacy and emotional distress and unpaid wages. Both Bryants are named, but it's obvious from the court papers that Vanessa is the alleged abuser at their tricked-out pad behind gates in Newport Coast's Pelican Ridge.
The suit claims Vanessa called Jimenez “lazy, slow, dumb, a fucking liar, and fucking shit.” And that's when she arrived at work!
The Mrs.–the pride of Huntington Beach's Marina High–is also alleged to have:
* Falsely claimed Jimenez stole her retainer;
* “Badgered, harassed and
humiliated Maria by yelling and screaming at Maria and criticizing her
in front of Kobe, the Bryants' children, employees and other people in
the household”;
* Forced Jimenez to put her hand in a bag of dog
feces to retrieve the price tag for an expensive blouse the maid had put in the washer.
Jimenez claims that she wanted to quit right then and there over the dog crap issue, but that Vanessa Bryant made her stay on the job until she worked off the $690 cost of the blouse. The maid alleges at another point that she threatened to quit but Kobe talked her out of it. It's unclear if that was also related to the pooch poop matter.
Kobe must be so glad the Lakers are on the road right now.
TMZ.com concludes with a reader poll solicitation asking what's a shittier job: Being Kobe's maid or his wife?
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.