A man once tasked with carting around
Jennifer Lopez has filed a lawsuit against the singer, actress and
"American Idol" judge, TMZ reports. The driver, Hakob Manoukian, claims
the star's manager, Benny Medina, humiliated him and ruined his career.
Now, he's suing both parties for unspecified damages.
As the gossip site reports, Manoukian, an
Iraqi native, says he went to work for J.Lo and husband Marc Anthony in
2005. The couple became fond of the chauffeur, he claims, and eventually
convinced him to become their head of security and transportation.
Doing so required him to shut down his own company, but Manoukian says
J.Lo offered to pay him more than $200,000 per year.
All was well until 2011, Manoukian insists,
when J.Lo started work on the film "What to Expect When You're
Working," and he suddenly had to see a lot more of Medina. The manager
apparently despised the driver and frequently berated him in public,
telling him, among other things, "He could not speak English well
enough," TMZ reports.
The friction culminated in a demotion for
Manoukian, as he was made to "merely be Lopez's Los Angeles driver," he
says in the suit. That led to his resignation -- and ultimately the
pending litigation.
While Lopez has yet to comment, Medina
dismissed the charges, referring to Manoukian as a "disgruntled employee
who chose to quit."
