Testifying that Paris Hilton assaulted and threatened him, a Hollywood events producer expressed relief Tuesday after a court commissioner granted him a restraining order against the waif-thin celebutante. "I'm going to sleep better at night knowing that she or her henchmen can't come after me," Brian Quintana said after leaving the courtroom. "Usually, it's the celeb that needs protection."
Hilton's representatives pooh-poohed the court order, saying the socialite has no desire to socialize with Quintana anyway."She's fine with the idea of not going near him," publicist Elliot Mintz said. "Just as he does not wish to be near her, she does not want to be near him. It's a perfect outcome."Hilton, who denied the accusations but didn't show up to tell her side of the story in court, spent the day elsewhere in Los Angeles getting ready for a "promotional event," Mintz said. The hotel heiress' attorney, Howard Weitzman, said he didn't want to put his client on the stand because he "did not want to create a media circus."Quintana's lawyer, Richard Lloyd Sherman, scoffed: "She didn't want to show up in court to be cross-examined because she knows she's full of it."Inside the packed courtroom, Commissioner Timothy Murphy granted the restraining order after hearing Quintana testify for more than an hour about his onetime friendship with Hilton and their ugly falling out.Their relationship grew strained, Quintana said in an interview later, after he began working as a media handler for her boyfriend, Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos. Hilton, 24, didn't like that he always seemed to be hanging around Niarchos, a 20-year-old sophomore at USC, wherever the couple went.
Quintana, 38, said he was hired by Niarchos to help introduce him to Hollywood's young social set and velvet-rope nightclub scene, and also to help his media-shy family keep him out of the headlines. Hilton, who knew Quintana first, accused him of trying to make her look bad to Niarchos' family, which would like to see the couple break up, he said.The final straw came in November, when Quintana told Hilton and Stavros that he got a call from a tabloid magazine."He got a call … asking for confirmation that she had herpes, but he said he didn't know anything about it," said Quintana's Beverly Hills lawyer, Richard Lloyd Sherman.Quintana said that Hilton grew furious, pushed him in the chest and told him: "if this gets out, you're a … dead man."He said Hilton badmouthed him to his clients, causing him to lose business.
The credits listed on the event producer's own website include a birthday bash for singer Rod Stewart's son, Sean, the world premiere for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and an Emmy Awards party for "Entertainment Tonight" and People magazine.After Hilton threatened him, he began getting calls from anonymous men saying he's "a dead man," Quintana said.He called Hilton "a physical and abusive person."Weitzman called Quintana "an annoying individual" and said Hilton called only to ask him to "stop bothering she and Stavros." He also accused Quintana of seeking publicity for himself.Before Tuesday's hearing, "we offered to stay away from him," Weitzman said. "They refused to accept the offer."Quintana said he hopes his police report will lead to criminal charges."Paris happens to be from the school of, 'there's no bad publicity,' " Quintana said, "but I think this is it."
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