Â鶹´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers sue for over US$878K in fees

FILE - Ghislaine Maxwell attends a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in this file photo from June 25, 2013. (United Nations Photo/Rick Bajornas via AP, File) FILE - Ghislaine Maxwell attends a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in this file photo from June 25, 2013. (United Nations Photo/Rick Bajornas via AP, File)
Share
DENVER -

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 husband, saying it was never paid for more than US$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.

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.

Emails and telephone messages left for two of Maxwell's defense attorneys, Christian Everdell and Bobbi Sternheim, were not returned. Calls to telephone numbers listed for Borgeson were not returned. Kevin Maxwell could not be immediately located for comment. In an email, his brother, Ian Maxwell, said nobody in the family, including Ghislaine Maxwell, would comment on the litigation.

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. Andrew strenuously denied the allegations and agreed to settle the lawsuit against him earlier this year.

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

W5 INVESTIGATES

W5 INVESTIGATES Jungle crackdown: Shutting down a treacherous narco migrant pipeline

This week, Avery Haines follows migrants' harrowing journeys across the Darien Gap. Strict new rules to stem the flood of migrants through the notorious stretch of dense jungle appear to be working, but advocates fear it could backfire.

A pedestrian has died after reportedly getting struck by an OPP cruiser in Bala early Sunday morning.

British Columbia saw a rare unanimous vote in its legislature in October 2019, when members passed a law adopting the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, setting out standards including free, prior and informed consent for actions affecting them.

Local Spotlight

A tale about a taxicab hauling gold and sinking through the ice on Larder Lake, Ont., in December 1937 has captivated a man from that town for decades.

When a group of B.C. filmmakers set out on a small fishing boat near Powell River last week, they hoped to capture some video for a documentary on humpback whales. What happened next blew their minds.

A pizza chain in Edmonton claims to have the world's largest deliverable pizza.

Sarah McLachlan is returning to her hometown of Halifax in November.

Wayne MacKay is still playing basketball twice at Mount Allison University at 87 years old.

A man from a small rural Alberta town is making music that makes people laugh.

An Indigenous artist has a buyer-beware warning ahead of Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Police are looking to the public for help after thieves broke into a Lethbridge ice creamery, stealing from the store.

An ordinary day on the job delivering mail in East Elmwood quickly turned dramatic for Canada Post letter carrier Jared Plourde. A woman on his route was calling out in distress.