Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers are suing for over $878K in fees

DENVER — A law firm that helped defend Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite convicted of aiding financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls, is suing her, her brother and husband, saying it was never paid more than $878,000 for his work.

Haddon, Morgan and Foreman of Denver alleged in a lawsuit filed Monday that Maxwell charged her brother Kevin Maxwell with paying her legal fees after she was arrested in 2020, but that he paid only a fraction of what they had charged in the run-up. to and during her trial. Kevin Maxwell urged the company to continue working on appeals after she was convicted despite unpaid bills and blamed Maxwell’s husband, Scott Borgerson, for standing in the way of payments, according to the lawsuit filed in Denver is cocked.

The lawsuit alleges that Borgerson formed an LLC to purchase real estate to protect his wife’s assets from creditors.

Two attorneys from the law firm — Laura Menninger and Jeffrey Pagliuca — were part of Maxwell’s legal team during her New York trial.

Maxwell was found guilty in December of sex trafficking, transporting a minor to engage in illegal sex acts and two conspiracy charges. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June and is currently incarcerated in FCI Tallahassee, a low-security federal prison in the Florida capital.

Emails and phone messages left for two of Maxwell’s lawyers, Christian Everdell and Bobbi Sternheim, were not returned. Calls to phone numbers listed for Borgeson went unanswered. Kevin Maxwell could not be immediately found for comment. In an email, his brother, Ian Maxwell, said no one in the family, including Ghislaine Maxwell, would comment on the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Haddon, Morgan and Foreman — a company founded by former public defenders and other high-profile clients such as basketball star Kobe Bryant and John Ramsey, father of JonBenet Ramsey — began to represent Maxwell in a 2015 lawsuit by Virginia. Guiffre.

In lawsuits, Giuffre alleged that from the age of 17, Epstein and Maxwell had sexual encounters with royalty, politicians, businessmen and other rich and powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. Andrew vehemently denied the allegations and agreed to settle the lawsuit against him earlier this year.