Ghislaine Maxwell Is Being Sued by Her Lawyers

They say they're owed more than $878K
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 25, 2022 4:04 AM CDT
Updated Aug 25, 2022 6:39 AM CDT
Ghislaine Maxwell's Lawyers Sue Her for $878
This courtroom sketch shows Ghislaine Maxwell, center, seated in court during jury selection, flanked by her attorneys Laura Menninger, left, and Bobbi Sternheim, right, during jury selection, Tuesday Nov. 16, 2021.   (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

A law firm that helped defend Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite convicted of helping the financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, is suing her, her brother, and her husband, saying it was never paid for more than $878,000 for its work. Denver-based Haddon, Morgan, and Foreman alleged in a lawsuit filed Monday that Maxwell put her brother Kevin Maxwell in charge of paying her legal fees after she was arrested in 2020 but that he only paid a fraction of what they had charged leading up to and during her trial.

Kevin Maxwell urged the firm to keep working on appeal issues after she was convicted despite the unpaid bills and had blamed Maxwell's husband, Scott Borgerson, for getting in the way of making payments, according to the lawsuit filed in Denver. The lawsuit alleges that Borgerson formed an LLC to buy real estate to shield his wife's assets from creditors, the AP reports. Two lawyers at the law firm—Laura Menninger and Jeffrey Pagliuca—were part of Maxwell’s legal team during her trial in New York. Maxwell was found guilty in December of sex trafficking, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, and two conspiracy charges.

She was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison and is serving time at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security federal prison in Florida’s capital. According to the lawsuit, Haddon, Morgan, and Foreman—a firm founded by former public defenders that has represented other high-profile clients like basketball star Kobe Bryant and John Ramsey, the father of JonBenet Ramsey— first began representing Maxwell in a 2015 lawsuit brought by Virginia Guiffre. In lawsuits, Giuffre claimed that starting when she was 17, Epstein and Maxwell set up sexual encounters with royalty, politicians, businessmen, and other rich and powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew.

(More Ghislaine Maxwell stories.)

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