Saying Dominic Foppoli and his winery have defaulted, Farrah Abraham asks judge for more than $20 million in damages for alleged rape

Reality television celebrity Farrah Abraham is asking a Sonoma County judge to award her more than $20 million in damages against former Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli, and his Christopher Creek Winery, claiming both parties have defaulted after failing to respond in court.

Judge Christopher Honigsberg scheduled a hearing for Oct. 27 to consider the judgments. In an order, he asked lawyers for Abraham to indicate whether Foppoli and the winery’s owners have been informed of the size of the requested damages. He also said the defendants in the case were not entitled to participate in the hearing but needed to be given notice of it.

The late October hearing may prove a pivotal point in the yearslong question of whether Foppoli will face any legal consequences after 14 women accused him of sexually predatory behavior, including rape and assault.

If the court awards damages to Abraham, her attorneys would have legal grounds to begin pursuing Foppoli’s assets.

An attorney for Christopher Creek Winery declined to comment.

Foppoli previously told The Press Democrat he does not believe he has been properly served in the case, saying process servers showed up at his mother’s birthday party and left the complaint, but did not find him there.

Attorneys for Abraham told the court they served him both on June 18 at that event, and previously in March by leaving the complaint with someone at his Windsor residence.

“We’ve got to identify a number because they haven’t responded to the complaint at all,” Abraham’s attorney Spencer Kuvin said of the damage figure, which breaks down to $10.3 million each from Foppoli and Christopher Creek. He declined to comment on what could happen at the October hearing and whether Foppoli or the winery could now respond to the complaint and deny the charges.

On Friday, Foppoli maintained he has not been served in a text message to The Press Democrat, but he did not say whether he would hire an attorney or try to make that argument in court himself.

“Suffice to say that there’s been no response and if there’s no response we are going to keep moving forward,” Kuvin said.

Attorneys for Abraham filed the request for damages the same week news broke that Foppoli had recently gotten engaged to an Italian woman.

Foppoli, a scion of a wealthy wine family, has been largely ignoring three civil lawsuits and living luxuriously in Italy as a long-running California criminal investigation drags on.

Abraham accused Foppoli of raping her at a wine tasting event held in Palm Beach, Florida, in late March 2021. She told police she lost her memory after sampling Christopher Creek wines and a cocktail Foppoli prepared. In the morning, she felt she had been raped, she told Palm Beach police in an April 2, 2021, report.

Six days later, the San Francisco Chronicle published an investigation into the accounts of four women who first made public allegations against Foppoli.

Those allegations also included accusations of Foppoli isolating women after drinking, and some of them included descriptions of memory loss.

To date, 14 women have accused him of rape, sexual assault or misconduct. Abraham’s allegations did not become public until May 2021. Foppoli had resisted nearly universal calls to resign as mayor after the first allegations surfaced and remained in office until Abraham’s allegations became public.

Reached Friday, Michael Zimmerman, an attorney for Christopher Creek, declined to comment. Zimmerman is listed as the winery’s attorney in two separate cases. One involves seven anonymous women who are suing Foppoli and Christopher Creek; the other involves a Montana woman who is also suing both defendants and accusing Foppoli of rape.

No attorney for Christopher Creek is listed in Abraham’s case. Abraham’s attorneys say Zimmerman requested an extension of the deadline to respond to the lawsuit but ultimately the winery never answered the complaint. The winery therefore entered into default in the case in May, her attorneys say.

Foppoli does not have legal counsel in any of the civil cases. He told The Press Democrat earlier this month he would hire an attorney if “it becomes necessary to fight back against technical defaults.”

Foppoli has denied all the allegations against him and pointed to a lack of criminal charges as evidence of his innocence. "As long as I have a voice I will never authorize a single penny to be paid out to any of these false accusers,“ he said in a series of text messages to a Press Democrat reporter earlier this month, in which he also suggested he had not been properly served in the Abraham case.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88