Rob Kardashian: who is Blac Chyna’s ex, how is he related to Kim and Khloe Kardashian - court case explained

A court case between the Kardashian-Jenner family and Blac Chyna has officially gotten underway after the model originally filed the lawsuit in 2017.

Chyna, whose real name is Angela White, is suing her ex-fiance Rob Kardashian and his wider family for $100 million dollars over allegations of defamation and interference with contracts.

This is what you need to know about the youngest Kardashian sibling Rob Kardashian and his relationship with Blac Chyna.

Who is Rob Kardashian?

Rob Kardashian is the youngest of the Kardashian siblings and the only boy to older sisters Kourtney, Kim and Khloe Kardashian.

Born 17 March 1987, Kardashian has starred alongside his sisters on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which ran from 2007 to 2021.

In 2009, Kardashian graduated from University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

At the time, Kim wrote on her blog: “Friday May 15, 2009 was a day that made my family very proud!

“My brother Robert graduated from USC! My father went to USC, my aunts, uncles, cousins and even my boyfriend [Reggie Bush] all went to USC.

“And now my baby brother is SC alumni! I’m so proud that he went to USC and finished in four years!

“He has honestly grown up so much and learned a lot along this journey of his, and our family is so proud of him!”

In 2011, Kardashian starred on season 13 of Dancing With the Stars and was paired up with two time champion dancer Cheryl Burke. After almost being eliminated in week four, Rob managed to make it all the way to the finals, with him and his dance partner coming in second behind winners J. R. Martinez and Karina Smirnoff.

In 2012, Kardashian claimed that he would be returning to the University of Southern California to study law later in the year - however, USC’s Gould School of Law stated on Twitter that that was not true, and that Kardashian hadn’t even applied to the school.

In 2015 it was reported that Kardashian had been diagnosed with diabetes after being hospitalised.

When did he date Blac Chyna?

Kardashian first got in a relationship with model Blac Chyna in January 2016. Chyna also starred on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and she and Kardashian actually had their own spin off show called Rob & Chyna which ran for one season in 2016.

After three months of dating it was announced that they were engaged.

Chyna announced the news on Instagram in a post which has since been deleted. The post showed off her ring and in the caption she wrote: “YES!.....!.....!”

A couple months later, in May 2016, it was revealed that Kardashian and Chyna were expecting a child together. The two posted the same photo on their respective Instagram accounts of an emoji version of Chyna with a big baby bump.

The two welcomed their daughter Dream Renée Kardashian on 10 November 2016. Chyna has a son, King Cairo Stevenson born in 2012, from her previous relationship with rapper Tyga.

The following month, on 17 December, the two announced that they were going their separate ways. While the two briefly reconciled they called it quits for good in February 2017.

In July 2017, Kardashian posted sexually explicit photos of Chyna on social media, leading to Chyna’s obtaining a temporary restraining order against him.

Lisa Bloom, one of Chyna’s attorneys, said at the time: “Revenge porn is a form of domestic abuse and it is also a crime in California and 38 other states. It is wrong.

“We are just delighted about the victory we had this morning.”

Talking to Good Morning America at the time of the incident, Chyna said: “This is a person that I trusted… I felt comfortable, you know, with even sending these pictures and even talking to him about certain things.”

Prior to dating Chyna, Kardashian dated Adrienne Bailon from 2007 to 2009, with their relationship making appearances on Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

Kardashian also dated musician Rita Ora in 2012, however following their split Kardashian took to Twitter to post a number of now-deleted tweets slamming the musician.

He claimed that she “cheated on me with nearly 20 dudes while we were together” and added “how can a woman who is so busy trying to start her own career have time to be with so many dudes all while in a relationship?”.

A source reportedly told the Sun at the time: “It’s really sad - they really liked each other but with him living in LA and her over in London, it was becoming impossible to maintain a relationship.

“They’d only decided to go public with the romance a couple of months ago so as not to put any pressure on themselves but they’ve already split.”

What’s the court case about?

Chyna filed a lawsuit against her ex-fiance and the Kardashian family back in 2017, alleging that the Kardashian and Jenner family conspired with TV executives at E! to cancel Chyna and Rob’s show, Rob & Chyna.

She is suing the family for $100 million dollars (£76 million), alleging defamation and interference with contracts.

Her attorney, Lynne Ciani, said: “Chyna went from being the star on E!’s number one hit show at $92,500 (£71,000) per episode to being off the airwaves entirely.”

Ciani added: “The defendants’ illegal conduct not only cost Chyna millions and millions of dollars; their conduct was emotionally devastating to her.”

Kris Jenner falsely accused Chyna of physically abusing Jenner’s son Rob Kardashian in a broader effort to force the couple’s reality show Rob & Chyna to be cancelled, Chyna’s lawyer told the Los Angeles court.

The Kardashians’ lawyer, Michael G Rhodes, has said that the reality show was cancelled by the E! Network not because of any machinations by the Kardashians, but because the couple broke up.

He said: “There is no Rob & Chyna show if there is no Rob and Chyna.”

Both sides agree that on December 4 2016, the day that Chyna and Rob Kardashian celebrated the renewal of their show for a second season, the two got into an argument that permanently damaged their relationship.

The differing accounts of that day will take up much of the trial which is expected to last seven to 10 days.

What’s been said in court?

Kardashian testified that he feared for his life on a night in 2016 when then-fiancee Chyna pointed a gun at his head, pulled a phone-charging cable around his neck and repeatedly hit him with a metal rod while under the influence of substances.

“She strangled me, she put a gun to my head twice, she was on cocaine and alcohol,” Kardashian said in a Los Angeles courtroom.

Kardashian grew angry when Ciani asked him why photos and video from the days that followed did not show any marks on him, despite his testimony that she had hit him repeatedly with a six-foot metal rod.

“Did you have as much as a Band-Aid on you?” the attorney asked.

“I just told you it didn’t leave a mark on my face,” Kardashian said. “And the gun to my head two different times during the night didn’t leave a mark to my temple.”

Chyna testified earlier in the trial that she was never violent towards Kardashian.

She said that on the night of December 14 and the morning of December 15, 2016, the couple had been celebrating the news that Rob & Chyna was getting a second season.

The all-night celebration turned into a bitter fight by morning, when he took her phone and shut himself in a closet, looking for evidence of communications with other men, she said.

She testified that earlier in the evening, she had wrapped a phone-charging cord around Kardashian’s neck playfully because he was ignoring her, and picked up a gun he kept around, always unloaded, from a nightstand as a joke.

The chain of events would lead to the end of the relationship, and their show.

He testified on Wednesday (27 April) that he felt in retrospect that their love was never real, and that he had been at the “weakest, worst point” in his life when their relationship began.

He said the coupling was “toxic” from the start, and that she beat him at least five times during the year-long relationship.

“Strangling someone, beating someone, that’s not a family,” he said. “That’s not love to me.”

Kardashian is not a defendant in this trial. Chyna’s allegations against him, stemming from the same incidents, will get a separate trial when this one is done.

Earlier on Wednesday, Corey Gamble, a key witness backing up Kardashian’s account of the assault, insisted that he saw Chyna punch him and whip him with a phone-charging cord.

“I said that she attacked him,” testified Gamble, the long-time boyfriend and sometime co-star of Keeping Up With the Kardashians matriarch Kris Jenner. “What I saw is what I saw.”

Gamble said he rushed to the house the couple was staying in after Kris Jenner got an early morning call from her son, who sounded deeply distressed.

When he arrived, he said, Chyna was holding some sort of metal rod, and threw it down. She rushed toward Kardashian, whipping the phone cord at him then punching him.

“By the time she got to him, she started hitting him,” Gamble testified. “I was able to get in the middle of them two. I even got hit two or three times.”

Gamble said Chyna threw a chair at Kardashian’s car as he was leaving, then attempted to pick up a table but Gamble stopped her.

During cross-examination, Ciani had Gamble read from a declaration he submitted in the case two years earlier, in which he said he arrived to find Chyna hitting Kardashian with her fists, but made no mention of any of the objects.

“You didn’t see sufficient to mention the metal rod, the cord or the table?” Ciani asked.

“I don’t know why I didn’t include those details,” Gamble said.