US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York
Ghislaine Maxwell is being sued by the legal team who helped represent her during her sex-trafficking trial. The law firm alleges the Jeffrey Epstein associate failed to pay them more than $850,000 in attorneys fees.
Denver-based law firm Haddon, Morgan, and Foreman field a lawsuit against Maxwell, her brother Kevin Maxwell, and husband Scott Borgerson in Denver District Court on Monday.
The firm first started working with Maxwell in 2015, after Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre sued her. Laura Menninger and Jeffrey Pagliuca, two of the firm's attorneys, then helped defend Maxwell when she faced trial late last year for helping procure underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Independent attorneys Bobbi Sternheim, Christian Everdell, and Mark Cohen of New York-based law firm Cohen & Gresser rounded out the legal team.
Only Sternheim was present when Maxwell was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison.
According to the lawsuit, obtained by Courthouse News Service, the firm had concerns about defending Maxwell in the criminal case, and her "ability to meet her financial obligations."
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But her brother assured the firm that he wanted them to remain a part of Maxwell's defense team, according to the lawsuit.
Initially, the firm agreed to continue representing Maxwell on a $250,000 retainer, the suit says. But Kevin Maxwell got them to agree instead to a $100,000 evergreen retainer, which the firm explained is when a client agrees to pay all invoices when due and maintain an agreed upon sum — in this case $100,000 — in the firm's client trust account at all times.
The firm says Kevin Maxwell wired the $100,000 retainer, but by November 2020, the retainer had been exhausted. For the next year and a half, in the lead up to Maxwell's trial and in its immediate aftermath, they say her brother continued to dodge requests for their bills to be paid and the retainer replenished.
The firm says they threatened to withdraw from the case multiple times, including just a few months before the trial, but Kevin enticed them to stay each time with "a handful of sporadic payments."
The attorney handling Maxwell's appeal did not respond to Insider's email for comment on Thursday. An email to an organization associated with Kevin Maxwell was also unanswered. Insider was not able to make contact with Scott Borgerson. Menninger and Pagliuca, the Haddon attorneys, also did not respond to requests for comment from Insider.
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The lawsuit also goes into detail about how the firm thinks Maxwell's wealth has been hidden by her husband, Scott Borgerson, in several real estate buys in Massachusetts. Maxwell is the daughter of the late UK media baron Robert Maxwell, and during the trial, it was revealed that Epstein gave her at least $30.7 million in the years they were together.
The firm says Kevin Maxwell eventually started to blame the payment issues on his sister's husband, Borgerson, who Kevin said was really in control of her funds.
The final straw for the firm was after Maxwell's conviction, by which point she had racked up more than $850,000 in attorneys fees. Kevin Maxwell wanted the firm to stay on and help with post-trial briefing, and kept promising to send cash but never did, according to the lawsuit.
The firm says they finally withdrew form the case in mid-January. They are now suing for the total amount to be repaid, with interest and costs of collection.
