‘RHOC’: Nicole James Lawsuit Settlement Rumors Are False, Terry Dubrow Reveals
Rumors that Nicole James from The Real Housewives of Orange County received a significant settlement after she sued Dr. Terry Dubrow are completely false.
Terry and Heather addressed the rumor on Heather Dubrow’s World podcast after Heather tracked online chatter that Nicole received a settlement following her lawsuit. Nicole hired Terry to do her breast augmentation surgery 20 years ago and was unhappy with the result. She revealed early in the RHOC season that her manager and attorneys pressured her to file a lawsuit against Terry, which she quickly dropped.
Did Terry settle financially with Nicole?
Shannon Beador gossiped about the lawsuit on RHOC to Emily Simpson and Gina Kirschenheiter. At Heather’s party, Gina told Heather what Shannon shared. This resulted in Terry and Heather asking Nicole about the lawsuit. They both admitted to being blindsided but cleared the air and hugged it out with Nicole pretty quickly.
After the episodes aired, Heather said she saw rumors that her husband gave Nicole a large settlement. “So what happened with Nicole was it happened 20 years ago,” Heather said on the podcast. “She dropped the lawsuit. It wasn’t a big deal. And so that’s why, you know, we were fine. I read online that that wasn’t true and that you gave her a big settlement.”
“Well, I mean, there was no settlement because it was a lawsuit that was filed that was quickly dropped and never went anywhere,” Terry replied. “I never saw the inside of a courtroom or arbitration proceeding. I don’t even think she was deposed. First of all, it’s 22 years ago and you know, it was one of those things. A complication definitely occurred. No question about it.”
Terry said doctors get sued
Terry added that doctors get sued, especially in his line of work. “But, you know, I’ve been sued when complications occur,” he said. “No question. I’m a doctor. And I do the hardest plastic surgery and the most high-risk plastic surgery on the planet.”
“So it goes badly, not very often, but every once in a while,” the RHOC husband continued. “And sometimes it can be really nasty. And that’s why we have consent forms. That’s why Paul [Nassif] and I make a huge deal about, ‘Hey, this is not a joke. This is not having your nails done. This is you’re going into a chemical coma under general anesthesia inducing massive trauma to try to make you look better.'”
Heather added, “And I think people don’t consider the fact that there’s other people’s physiology. There’s aftercare, there is following doctors’ instructions. All kinds of things that contribute to – I’m not talking about this case. In general, there’s all kinds of things that contribute to a result. But I just want you to put it out there that there was no settlement.”
Heather thinks Nicole didn’t want to bring up the lawsuit
Nicole was supposed to be a main cast member on RHOC, but backed out after drama mounted after the party, ET reports.
“I really felt like she either thought we knew and didn’t want to discuss it, or we didn’t know, and she didn’t want to bring it up,” Heather told ET about Nicole.
“I mean, this is probably a bad analogy, but you know when you meet someone and you can’t remember their name, but now you’ve met them so many times, it’s like it’s too late to ask and you have to ask someone else?” she continued. “I feel like we just became friends and maybe that ship sailed, and then we were good and she didn’t want to bring it up. And [she] probably naively didn’t think that anything like that– I mean, it was so long ago, and it was dropped. And so to her, it was like in the past.”
